Unsettling Nostalgia in Spain and Chile

Unsettling Nostalgia in Spain and Chile

Longing for Resistance in Literature

and Film

Lisa DiGiovanni

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 Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Prologue: Longing for Resistance 1
Introduction: The Politics and Poetics of Nostalgia in Spain and Chile 11

1 Unsettling Nostalgia in Roberto Brodsky’s Últimos días de la

historia 53
2 Memories of Motherhood and Militancy in Chile: Gender and
Nostalgia in Calle Santa Fe by Carmen Castillo 77
3 Unsettling the Archive: De monstruos y faldas by Carolina
Astudillo 97
4 Postwar Prison Nostalgia: La voz dormida by Dulce Chacón 117
5 Nostalgia and Inner Exile in Almudena Grandes’s Spain 139
6 Detective Pursuits of an Ironic Nostalgic: Roberto Bolaño’s
Estrella distante 165

Conclusion: Longing for Resistance 187

References 197
Index 211
About the Author 221

v
 Acknowledgments

Throughout this book, I explore the concept of nostalgia in all of its complex-
ity. As I attempt to thank all of the people who inspired and supported me
throughout this project, my thoughts are tinged with nostalgia for particular
moments, conversations, places, and friendships. First, I would like to ex-
press my deepest gratitude to Gina Herrmann and Michael Lazzara. Thank
you for your commitment, generosity, and direction. Gina mentored me
throughout my Ph.D. program, while Michael introduced me to many places
and people in Santiago whose insights helped me develop my understanding
of contemporary Chile. Since then, I have returned, making new friendships
and strengthening others. Thank you, Roberto Brodsky, Patricia Pérez Val-
dez, Adolfo Ramírez Sobarzo, Leith Passmore, Paz Ahumada, Marisol Bra-
vo, Pía Barros, Resha Cardone, Boris Hau, and Juan Camilo Lorca. In Spain,
my understanding of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco Dictatorship has
evolved not only through conversations with scholars, but with my extended
family who has offered their support and multiple perspectives during my
travels to Madrid, Barcelona, and Galicia. Spain has become a second home
to me, and for that I thank Emilio Vicente, Rosa Torras, Leopoldo Alvarez
Sousa, Fina Pérez Sousa, Javier Barbi, Félix Echávarri, and Fani Yepes. El
Archivo de la Guerra Civil Española in Salamanca and El Museo de la
Memoria y Derechos Humanos in Santiago de Chile also played a role in the
making of this book.
Unsettling Nostalgia has its roots in the research that I developed at the
University of Oregon in the Department of Romance Languages and later in
the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. My Ph.D. pro-
gram provided me with special teaching and learning opportunities, as well
as funding for research in Chile and Spain. I am especially grateful to Carlos
Aguirre, Pedro García Caro and Cecilia Enjuto Rangel for offering critical

vii
viii Acknowledgments

feedback and encouragement in the early stages of this project. I am equally

appreciative of their ongoing advice and friendship. Thank you as well to
Juan Armando Epple, Leonardo García Pabón, Amrita Banerjee, Judith Ra-
skin, Leah Middlebrook, Christina Lux, Amanda Powell, Emily Taylor, and
Marsha Emerman for carefully reading earlier versions of my work or for
offering guidance. Our community in Eugene was a wellspring of creativity
and solidarity. Thank you Gabriela Martínez, Sayo Murcia, Anuncia Escala,
Stephanie Wood, Meche Lu, Guadalupe Moreno, Mirtha Avalos, Lauretta De
Renzo-Huter, Elena Espinoza, Roberto Galo Arroyo, and Adrea Bogle. For
the inspiration for the subtitle Longing for Resistance, I thank Philip Scher.
More recently, my colleagues at Keene State College have had a signifi-
cant impact on my work. For spending time on my writing and for sharing
theirs, I thank Emily Robins Sharpe, Jim Waller, Taneem Husain, Jamie
Landau, Sara Hottinger, Ted White, Laurie Stuhlbarg, Jiwon Ahn, Jo Dery,
Martin Roberts, Janet Albarado, Hank Knight, Laura Premack, Kirsti Sandy,
Dana Smith, Rafael Ponce Cordero, Ashley Greene, Amber Davisson, Irina
Leimbacher, Sasha Davis, Anne-Marie Mallon, Peggy Walsh, Micky New,
Skye Stephenson and Chris Smith. Establishing a split contract between Hol-
ocaust and Genocide Studies and Modern Languages and Cultures at Keene
State College has allowed me to push my research in new directions and for
that I am grateful to all involved in making it happen, particularly Kirsti
Sandy and Jim Waller. For institutional support at Keene State College, I
would like to thank Andy Harris and the selection committees that granted
me a course reassignment grant, summer seed funding, and multiple faculty
development grants for the development of this monograph.
I have also been inspired by undergraduate students at Keene State Col-
lege, especially Jewel Bean, Jedidiah Crook, Sade Esquivel, Isaiah Lapierre,
Maggie Rice, Valentina Pinzon-Mendez, Bridget Pierce, Susana Hassanein,
and Katherine Briefs, as well as graduate students at Indiana State University
including Kareema Maddox, Jackie Markle, Brook Elise Steppe, and Sol
Angel Bernal-Tindera. At the University of Oregon, Jackie Sheean and Me-
lissa Frost stand out in memory as some of the first outstanding students with
whom I have had the pleasure to work. For our brief time together as students
in Chile and for our conversations about Michelle Peña, I thank Alice Ma-
Call.
Over the last ten years, I have been invited to contribute to various publi-
cations and to work with scholars that have helped me sharpen my argu-
ments. I thank David William Foster, Lorraine Ryan, Ana Corbalán, Sabas-
tiaan Faber, Barbara Zecchi, María José Gámez Fuentes, Rebeca Maseda
García, Jordana Blejmar, Natalia Fortuny, Laia Quílez Esteve, Maja Mikula,
and Mark de Valk. Shorter versions of chapters 1 and 2 appeared in the
following publications: Chasqui 40, no. 2 (2011): 108–124; Journal of Latin
American Cultural Studies 21, no. 1 (2012): 15–36. Several passages from
 Acknowledgments ix

chapter 5 appear in the essay “Teaching Narratives of Women’s Inner Exile

in Spain and Chile” in The Iberian and Latin American Transatlantic Studies
Reader, eds. Cecilia Enjuto Rangel, Sebastian Faber, Pedro García Caro and
Robert Patrick Newcomb (forthcoming 2019). All the material upon which I
have expanded appears with their permission. I also drew some concepts
from my essay “Return to Galicia: Nostalgia, Nation, and Gender in Manuel
Rivas’s Spain” in Memory-Nostalgia-Melancholy: Re-imagining Home in a
Time of Mobility, ed. Maja Mikula, Cambridge Scholars, 2017, 15–34 and
“Visual Archives of Loss and Longing in Journal of Romance Studies 13, no.
3 (2013): 62–74. I thank the editors and readers of those previous publica-
tions as they helped me refine my arguments. For her enthusiasm for this
monograph and her work shepherding me through the publication process, I
thank Nicolette Amstutz, Senior Acquisitions Editor at Lexington Books.
The meticulous and extremely perceptive anonymous peer-reviewers of this
monograph also deserve a special acknowledgment. Maribel Rams, I cannot
thank you enough for your constructive feedback. Also important is a note of
appreciation to all of the authors and filmmakers in my study, particularly
Roberto Brodsky, Carolina Astudillo and Patricio Guzmán who generously
responded to my inquiries about their work. While I never had the opportu-
nity to meet Svetlana Boym, I would like to acknowledge my admiration for
her brilliant work on nostalgia since it has dramatically influenced this book.
I wish to convey a very personal expression of gratitude for those rela-
tionships that predate graduate school and my professional career. I thank my
parents, Jacquelyn Button and Sylvester DiGiovanni, and brother Sebastian
DiGiovanni, for their generous support and for having the unselfish love and
confidence in me to spread my wings at an early age. I hope to do the same
for Belén and Sole. I owe sincere thanks to the Holladay family, especially
Jim, Diana, Myakka, Kisa, and Tyrone, for inspiring my curiosity and love of
the arts and humanities. Robert Neustadt has also been extremely significant
on my path. His passion for literature and dedication to social justice has
provided a model for teaching and research to which I can only aspire.
Most importantly, I am forever grateful for my compañero, Carlos Vi-
cente, and our daughters Sole y Belén. You are my tierra, sol and cielo.
Thank you for your unfailing love, humor, patience, and encouragement,
especially when I needed it most. We have made memories that I long to
relive, but we have many more to make. I dedicate this book to you.
 Prologue
Longing for Resistance

On June 26, 2008 over a thousand Chileans gathered at La Moneda presiden-

tial palace in Santiago and the General Cemetery to pay homage to Salvador
Allende on the centennial of his birth. The day was marked by a surge of
nostalgic images, elegiac tributes, concerts, and documentary films dedicated
to the former socialist leader whose life and political project had been dis-
credited in the public sphere by the consolidators of the military dictatorship
(1973–1990). The headlines of Santiago’s left-leaning newspapers and week-
ly journals read: “Honor y gloria al presidente heroico,” “En la Moneda, en el
Centenario de su Nacimiento, Allende Exige Unidad,” and, “100 Años Al-
lende Vive.” Students, workers, and veteran revolutionaries shouted this last
slogan in front of the presidential palace. Through a loudspeaker, a middle-
aged man howled the rallying call, “¡Camarada Salvador Allende!” to which
the crowd replied, “¡Presente! ¡Ahora! ¡Y Siempre!” 1 While this gathering
seemed to bolster solidarity among many of Allende’s supporters, there were
also deep-rooted disagreements between communists and socialists that di-
vided the crowd. While some advocates of the Concertación government (a
center-left coalition of Christian Democrats and Socialists) headed by presi-
dent Michelle Bachelet vindicated a continuity with Allende’s government,
others disagreed claiming that if Allende had survived, he would have been
profoundly disappointed with contemporary Chilean politics and the continu-
ation of the neoliberal economic policies implemented by the Pinochet re-
gime.
Fortuitously, my research trip to Santiago coincided with this historic and
nostalgic day on which Chileans engaged in a public, shared, albeit divided,
commemoration of Allende’s birth. On June 26, I visited the place of Al-
1
2 Prologue

lende’s death at La Moneda and the following day I paid homage at his
gravesite, constructed in 1990 after his family was allowed to exhume his
remains from an unmarked grave in Viña del Mar and bring them to Santiago
for public burial. Allende’s supporters adorned his grave with fresh red roses
and carnations along with a long thin red cloth banner that read: “ALLENDE
VIVE 100 AÑOS ALLENDE VIVE.” What struck me, though, was a large
green wreath with the red and yellow flag of Catalunya at the base of the
tomb.
I saw the wreath as a profound symbolic offering that reflects a shared
aspiration to build a progressive, egalitarian society, its loss, and a subse-
quent nostalgia for a program of social transformation that was obliterated.
Historian Paul Preston underscores the points of contact between the Spanish
Republican project of the 1930s and Chile’s Popular Unity project of the
1970s. “The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) arose in part out of the violent
opposition of the privileged and their foreign allies to the reformist attempts
of liberal Republican- Socialist governments to ameliorate the daily living
conditions of the most wretched members of society. The parallels with Chile
in the 1970s or Nicaragua in the 1980s hardly need emphasizing” (Preston
2006, 8). What is more, the extreme right sought to eliminate Basque, Cata-
lan, and Galician nationalism in the Spanish Civil War. After the war, those
Catalan anarchists, socialists, Communists, and separatists who did not go
into exile suffered severe consequences of the Francoist dictatorship
(1939–1975), which enforced strict policies of political and cultural repres-
sion, persecution, re-education, and socioeconomic discrimination.
The donation of the wreath highlights the relationship between the Chi-
leans, Catalans, and Spaniards who saw in Allende the dream of a democratic
socialist project and the loss of that dream. Standing in front of the tomb, I
wondered who might have left this symbolic wreath. I mused that it might
have been the elderly Republican exile Victor Pey who arrived in Valparaíso,
Chile along with 2,100 other Republicans on September 3, 1939, on the ship
called the Winnipeg. The previous evening, I had seen Pey featured in the
documentary Buscando a Allende (2008) by the Argentine director Carlos
Pronzato. In the film, Pronzato embarks on a nostalgic journey “in search of
Allende.” He travels to his birthplace in Valparaíso and interviews his child-
hood friends, former supporters, leftist militants, journalists, and admirers.
To me, the most intriguing interview was with Victor Pey, who described in
a brief but colorful vignette his extraordinary friendship with Salvador Al-
lende, who in 1939 was the minister of health who lobbied to aid Spanish
Republican refugees. 2
Fascinated by this story, I talked to the film director, who generously
gave me Pey’s phone number and informed me that he was still living in
Santiago. Over the following month, I attempted to track him down, writing
him emails and leaving him phone messages, but to no avail. I searched the
 Prologue 3

internet, collecting threads and scraps of Pey’s story, mulling them over and
imagining the questions I wanted to ask him. The information I gathered
revealed that Pey was born in 1915 and studied engineering, specializing in
metallurgy, an essential industry for the production of weapons. During the
war, Pey united with the anarcho-syndicalist labor union the CNT
(Confederación Nacional del Trabajo) and became part of the Durruti Col-
umn consisting of approximately 6,000 anarchist fighters. When Barcelona
fell to Franco’s fascist troops on January 26, 1939, Pey escaped to Lyon,
France with his mother and sister. Shortly thereafter, he discovered that
Pablo Neruda was in Paris organizing the departure of the Winnipeg and was
selecting Republican political exiles that would accompany him on the ship
headed to Chile in September. Pey planned a meeting with the Chilean poet
and soon secured a space on the old French cargo ship with his family.
By the time the Pey family had boarded the Winnipeg, Pedro Aguirre
Cerda, a progressive teacher and politician of the left-wing Radical Party,
had recently won the Chilean presidential elections with the coalition of the
Chilean Popular Front (1936–1941). Like the Spanish Popular Front, Chile’s
left-wing alliance united Socialists and Communists, as well as organizations
such as the feminist Movimiento Pro-Emancipación de las Mujeres de Chile,
the trade union Confederación de Trabajadores de Chile and the united Ma-
puche movement known as the Frente Único Araucano. Significantly, the
Chilean Frente Popular was deeply impacted by the Spanish Civil War as
Fabián Almonacid Zapata argues in “Españoles en Chile: reacciones de la
colectividad frente a la República, Guerra Civil y Franquismo (1931–1940).”
While supporters of the Chilean Popular Front saw in Spain the rise of a new
egalitarian society, right-wing reactionaries saw the breakdown of a nation.
Consequently, the Spanish Republican exiles that arrived at the port of
Valparaíso in September 1939 were received with solidarity by some and
hostility by others.
After Victor Pey’s arrival in Chile, he established a friendship with Salva-
dor Allende. In the 1940s and 1950s, Pey ran an engineering firm involved in
refining Chile’s ports then later became involved in the newspaper El Clarín.
Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, the paper thrived until Pinochet con-
fiscated it in 1973, coincidentally only a short time after Pey had purchased
the paper. The regime ordered Pey to report to authorities in the days after the
coup, but he soon fled the country in fear of detainment. In an almost nove-
lesque turn of events, Pey returned to Spain where Franco was nearing his
death. Pinochet’s soldiers destroyed El Clarín, its printing presses and all of
the newspaper’s documentation. Pey’s financial losses (the business, the
buildings, and the new printing presses) totaled approximately $1.3 million,
while his personal losses were incalculable and beyond repair. Upon his
return to Chile during the transition to democracy in 1990, Pey brought a
legal case against the Chilean government for financial compensation for the
4 Prologue

newspaper. Pey’s partner in the effort to recover El Clarín was lawyer Joan
Garcés (b. 1944), the Valencian political adviser to Allende who was also
driven out of Chile and back to Spain after the coup. During the Pinochet
years, it was Garcés who worked with Chileans exiles in Spain and later with
the Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón to develop a groundbreaking legal
case that culminated in the arrest of Pinochet in London in 1998.
Pey’s effort to demand justice in Chile is part of a larger socio-political
scenario involving various Spanish and Chilean social actors seeking to pub-
licly denounce both Pinochet’s and Franco’s human rights violations. Pey’s
struggle for compensation lasted nearly twenty years and ended in an unjust
dismissal of his legal case. Some critics, such as John Dinges, have suggested
that the Pey case exemplifies the legacy of the dictatorship and the remaining
lack of ideological diversity and journalistic freedom in the Chilean printed
press. From my perspective, Pey’s story evokes the transatlantic connections
that I have sought to draw out in my research on contemporary Spanish and
Chilean cultural production. The recorded version of Pey’s story also reveals
the unsettling voids in the historical record that ignore, for example, the
experiences of women and children. Absent are the stories of solidarity and
subsequent trauma related to loss and dispossession experienced by Pey’s
mother and sister. Still today, so many issues seem unexplored.
As I thought through issues of memory, nostalgia, and narrative in the
context of Spain and Chile, I considered how an interview with Pey and his
family could shed light on many of my inquiries. How did they remember the
Second Spanish Republic and the Spanish Civil War? What did their journey
on the Winnipeg mean to them? In what way were the struggles of men and
women different? Did they nostalgically long to return to Spain or did they
embrace a new life in Chile? What did the Popular Unity government mean
to them in the early 1970s? How has their political and national identity
transformed over the years? Was their return to Spain after the 1973 military
coup a homecoming or yet another defeat? Now, in the wake of the regimes,
did they feel nostalgia for the cultural and political milieu that characterized
the brief periods of the Second Spanish Republic and the Popular Unity
government? And finally, did they leave the wreath adorned with the Catalan
flag at the base of Salvador Allende’s tomb? By the end of my journey, I had
begun to lose hope in a possible encounter with Pey until I went to a book
presentation in Santiago and by chance, he and his daughter sat right in front
of me. Full of hope, I approached them, but he mistook me for someone else
and embraced me. After I awkwardly asked him if he had received my
messages, he realized his error and kindly told me that he would get back to
me, which never happened. The interview that I had envisioned lingers,
forever suspended. My questions remain unanswered, and my longing to
listen to their stories remains unfulfilled. Victor Pey died on October 5, 2018,
at the age of 103.
 Prologue 5

I begin with this story because it sets the stage to explore the historical,
affective, and thematic underpinnings of this book. The Pey family’s defense
of the Republic in the Spanish Civil War and their support of Chile’s Popular
Unity government underscores the interconnectedness between Chile’s and
Spain’s revolutionary projects calling for more profound forms of social and
economic justice. This story also illustrates the rightwing military backlash
against such projects, and finally, current debates concerning the legacies of
the military regimes and the politics of memory. A range of theoretical
approaches could be used to analyze each of these interrelated topics, but at
the heart of this book is the question of nostalgia. How is nostalgia experi-
enced and how it is conveyed in literature and film?
Since I have often been asked about the origins of this book and the
inspiration behind these questions, it is fitting to offer a few words based on
my own experience. For me, the attempt to understand nostalgia and its
allure has been both personal and political. On the one hand, my interest in
stories of resistance to fascist forms of government and culture unveils my
own “displaced nostalgia,” which, according to sociologist Janelle Wilson, is
a type of nostalgia for times and experiences unknown to the nostalgic sub-
ject. “Nostalgia for bygone times does not require having actually experi-
enced those times” (Wilson 2005, 99). Media, Wilson suggests, can in fact,
create and sustain nostalgia. Reading narratives of 1936 and 1968 can make
the current moment seem pale in comparison. If Generation X includes those
born between 1965 and 1981, then that diffuse label used in many contexts,
including the United States, Spain, and Chile, shades my identity. The mean-
ing of the classification is open to debate, but most would agree that “Gen X”
generally denotes a cohort that came of age during the rise of neoliberal
capitalism, ultra-consumerism, accelerated environmental destruction, ongo-
ing economic and gender inequality, impunity and unabashed individualism.
As I explain later, responses to such conditions range widely, among them
indifference, skepticism about new horizons, and conversely a kind of wide-
eyed nostalgia. For me, it is unsurprising that Spain’s and Chile’s cultural
production about the Spanish Civil War and the Popular Unity has captured
the imagination of so many who did not experience them directly. I am
referring to the appeal of representations of periods of political and social
mobilization and the enthusiasm to improve the living conditions of women,
minorities and the working classes through the implementation of radical
educational, healthcare, and agrarian reform. Such impassioned histories
captivate, stir the imagination and, for many, provoke an interest to dig
beneath the surface.
While the exposure to films, novels, and documentaries that convey nos-
talgia for revolutionary periods has played a role in the development of this
research, that is only part of the story. To this must be added the instrumental
role of my relationships with friends and family who experienced first-hand
6 Prologue

twentieth-century political upheaval in Spain, Chile, and the United States in

the 1930s and 1960s and responded to that upheaval in vastly different ways.
The relationships that I have forged have shaped my perspective of the com-
pelling and competing histories of the Chilean Popular Unity and the Spanish
Civil War. My partner’s family, which I call my own, has been molded by
both the experience of immigration (linking Galicia, Catalunya, the Domini-
can Republic, and Argentina) and an enduring rootedness in the many politi-
cal realities of Spain. Listening to their conflicting attitudes on the meanings
of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship has inevitably made me
acutely aware of the complexities of memory and its relationship to political
views in the present. After becoming mindful of my own nostalgic response
to romanticized, often simplistic, portrayals of the revolutionary epochs of
the 1930s and 1960s, I began to wonder what nostalgia erases, conceals, or
distorts.
Unsettling Nostalgia investigates how contemporary writers and film-
makers have rendered visible the arduous process of coming to terms not
only with the effects of 20th-century dictatorial violence in Spain and Chile
but also the loss of leftist collectivities that characterized the Second Spanish
Republic (1931–1939) and the Chilean Popular Unity (1970–1973). Through
the analysis of a small but illustrative collection of contemporary novels and
films, this book describes how nostalgia imbues representations of revolu-
tionary struggle and clandestine resistance to the Franco dictatorship
(1939–1975) and the Pinochet regime (1973–1989). By reaching beyond
reductive definitions that limit nostalgia to a foggy backward gaze precipitat-
ed by a conservative desire to defend traditional power hierarchies, I explore
the complexity of a critically conscious type of longing and form of transmis-
sion that I term “unsettling nostalgia.” It is not that the authors and filmmak-
ers in this study wish to return to the context of war and dictatorship. Instead,
they develop plotlines and characters that at once allow them to reclaim past
struggles and to express a profound dissatisfaction with ongoing impunity,
structural gender and class inequality and the deterioration of human rela-
tions through the forces of capitalism.
For Chile, I examine the novels Últimos días de la historia (2001) by
Roberto Brodsky and Estrella distante (1996) by Roberto Bolaño and the
documentary film Calle Santa Fe (2008) by Carmen Castillo. For Spain, I
analyze the documentary De monstruos y faldas (2008) by Carolina Astudillo
and the novels La voz dormida (2002) by Dulce Chacón and two novels by
Almudena Grandes, El corazón helado (2007) and El lector de Julio Verne
(2012). In previous publications, I have used the lens of unsettling nostalgia
to analyze the documentary Mi vida con Carlos (2010) by the Chilean film-
maker Germán Berger Hertz and the novel El lápiz del carpintero (1998) by
the Galician writer Manuel Rivas. In the interest of bringing fresh material to
this book, those essays will remain stand-alone articles but recommended for
 Prologue 7

further reading. The former appears in the Journal of Romance Studies

(2013) and the latter was published in the book Memory-Nostalgia-Melan-
choly: Re-imagining Home in a Time of Mobility (2017).
By calling attention to the parallels between nostalgic modes that respond
to and “resist” the violent hijacking of the Second Republic and the Allende
government, this book traces an evocative continuity between Spain and
Chile that goes beyond the initial work that links authoritarian regimes and
practices of political, cultural, and gendered repression. The writers and film-
makers that I study reclaim a cultural continuity that breaks with the regimes’
nationalist and patriarchal narratives through the construction of stories of
dissent. They depict the tremendous losses suffered by women and men of
the resistance and commemorate the emotional bonds that they forged
through shared political and social values. The vindication of solidarity in
these novels and films implicitly or explicitly contrasts the disconnection,
apathy, and individualism of the neoliberal post-revolutionary present with
the political mobilization and collectivism of yesteryear. Nostalgia thus con-
veys not only a message about the past, but a powerful message about the
disenchantment widely felt in the present.
At the same time, this selection of works from 1996–2012 excavates
memories of political conflict, shortcomings, ambivalences, and contradic-
tions among the anti-Franco and anti-Pinochet resistance. Some of the novels
and films describe, for instance, an imperfect relationship between theory
and practice when it came to gender hierarchies. While equality between men
and women seemed to be one of the promises of these revolutionary periods,
these works show that many Spaniards and Chileans failed to embrace new
kinds of modern relationships based on a shared commitment to challenging
gender norms. Heterosexual men often marginalized women and the non-
gender conforming within the opposition while they maintained their norma-
tive power as leaders. Through the representation of such stories, the novels
and films in this study raise questions involving ingrained power hierarchies,
thereby prompting us to gain a more complex understanding of the past. The
delicate and often painful articulation of such memories is equally important.
In this way, Unsettling Nostalgia redefines nostalgia by showing that it may
at once idealize people, places, and times, and simultaneously critique their
many blemishes.
If nostalgia is an emotional response to the lingering sense of loss in the
aftermath of violence, it is also a tool. By provoking a nuanced engagement
with the past and eliciting a reflection on the ongoing quest for justice and
belonging, nostalgic representation becomes a means to create community
and link generations. History takes on new life in literary and cinematic
reconstructions and these, in turn, contribute to the construction of identity.
This study frames nostalgia as a trans-generational post-revolutionary act of
memory in public culture that may inspire new affiliative claims and subvert
8 Prologue

the regimes’ triumphalism while remaining cautious of monologic idealiza-

tions. Nostalgia resonates most powerfully not in reductive idealizations of
resistance fighters, but rather in complex portraits of mothers, fathers, daugh-
ters, and sons whose stories bring out the complexities of historical processes
while calling into question the gendered assumptions that shape them. By
paying attention to the gendered dimensions of political resistance in film
and narrative fiction, we complicate appeals to a homogeneous memory of
the anti-Franco or anti-Pinochet resistance and, by extension, contribute to
the interdisciplinary dialogue among the humanities and social sciences on
the meanings of revolution and dictatorship in post-dictatorial Spain and
Chile.
To frame the case studies, I offer an introductory chapter that provides a
historical contextualization and theoretical foundation. It shows how twenti-
eth-century histories of Spain and Chile parallel each other on many levels.
Progressive Chilean writers and politicians stood in solidarity with Spanish
anti-fascist fighters during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and offered
refuge to Republican exiles during the subsequent military regime of Francis-
co Franco (1939–1975). After the death of Franco, Spain became a site of
Chilean exile in the wake of the military coup and the ensuing dictatorship of
Augusto Pinochet (1973–1989). From the post-dictatorial 1990s to the
present, both nation-states have struggled to deal with the legacies of militar-
ized masculinity, torture, disappearance, and neoliberal economic and politi-
cal practices. Writers, filmmakers, and victims’ organizations have sought to
contest the regimes’ discourses and give voice to marginalized groups.
The introduction also provides a rationale for the selection of genres.
Most critics consider fictional films and narratives as sites for nostalgia while
they ignore the documentary film. Challenging the assumption that docu-
mentary is an uncreative and “objective” form, I expose the constructed
nature of the non-fiction genre, created through narrative voiceover, inter-
views, and dramatic reconstruction. Viewing nostalgic fictional narrative
alongside documentary film engenders a reflection on the differences and
similarities between the often-unrecognized strategies that communicate nos-
talgic longing.
In light of this book’s rationale for the comparison of Chile and Spain,
one could argue that the inclusion of Argentina and Uruguay in this study
would not only be relevant, but necessary given the similarities between
sociopolitical patterns and responses to those patterns. It is for that reason
that previous transatlantic approaches to human rights violations and memo-
ry have compared Spain and Argentina. Notable examples include Radical
Justice: Spain and the Southern Cone Beyond Market and State (2011) by
Luis Martín Cabrera; Post-Authoritarian Cultures: Spain and Latin Ameri-
ca’s Southern Cone (2008) by Luis Martín-Estudillo; and “De aquí a allá, de
ayer a hoy: posmemoria y cine documental en la España y Argentina
 Prologue 9

contemporáneas” (2013) by Laia Quílez. As I look forward, I plan to expand

my reach, but more importantly, I hope that readers of this comparison bene-
fit not only from the detailed examinations of the works that I have selected
but also from the idea of unsettling nostalgia to analyze works in other
contexts and comparisons including Argentina and Uruguay.
My approach is grounded in Memory Studies, Feminist Studies, Genocide
Studies, Literary Criticism, and Film Studies. These fields have offered core
insights that have allowed me to engage in original ways with the representa-
tion of both political repression and nostalgia. My analysis draws primarily
from the theoretical work of Elizabeth Jelin, Marianne Hirsch, Jo Labanyi,
Walter Benjamin, Fredric Jameson, and Cynthia Enloe. Of particular impor-
tance is Svetlana Boym’s The Future of Nostalgia, a groundbreaking text that
coined the terms “reflective nostalgia” and “restorative nostalgia.” Boym
maintains that nostalgia can be a “reflective” examination of the past or a
“restorative” flat idealization. I move beyond Boym’s framework to illustrate
how these nostalgic forms are not mutually exclusive. Overtly idealizing
“restorative” perceptions of the past that manifest a schematized rhetoric may
overlap with “reflective” nostalgic open-endedness and ideological nuance. I
expand on Boym’s lexicon to conceptualize hybrid and “unsettling” forms of
nostalgia, showing that contrasting types of longing can shift, collide, and
meld together in unexpected ways. These works illustrate the need for an
innovative paradigm of analysis, one that also addresses the intersections of
identity (gender, sexuality, class, race, nation, age) in relation to memory and
nostalgia.
With its focus on loss, recollection, and redress and how these relate to
identity construction and representation, Unsettling Nostalgia contributes to
the fields of Latin American Studies, Transatlantic Studies, Memory Studies,
Women’s and Gender Studies, Film Studies, and Genocide Studies. In the
last decade, many critics have explored how film and narrative fiction per-
form memory work and how texts insert themselves into the ongoing debates
about the legacies of the military regimes. What sets this book apart is its
interpretive lens focused on the complexities of nostalgia and its intersections
particularly with gender and politics in contemporary literature and film. By
comparing new works by both emerging and well-known authors and film-
makers within a transnational framework, this book generates insights that
would not be possible if these areas were investigated separately. As a timely
reflection on the most current memory struggles, Unsettling Nostalgia aims
to re-imagine the relationship between memory and identity, exploring how
individuals draw inspiration from the past as they confront the social and
political remains of the dictatorships in the present.
10 Prologue

NOTES

1. For more on the event see the article “What Would Allende Say?” in online journal n+1,
July 27, 2008, Luke Epplin, http://www.nplusonemag.com/what-would-allende-say.
2. Victor Pey also appears in the documentary film Salvador Allende (2004) by Patricio
Guzmán. For more information on Pey, see “The Curious Case of Victor Pey” by John Dinges.
 Introduction
The Politics and Poetics of Nostalgia in Spain and Chile

NOSTALGIA: UNRAVELING THE CONCEPT

How can we define nostalgia? Why and how does it emerge? What does
nostalgia do? Can we have nostalgia for something we have not experienced
ourselves? How do literature and film convey nostalgia? These questions
have vexed psychologists, sociologists, historians, and literary and film crit-
ics alike. The term “nostalgia” has meant various things at different times.
Contemporary definitions coincide in the idea that nostalgia is an emotional
state and a perception of the past that reflects notions of social and historical
discontinuity. Underpinning nostalgic remembrance is a perceived contrast
between an unappealing current moment and an attractive yesteryear. Such
perceptions serve as a kind of remedy for an individual or collective disillu-
sionment in the present. For Stuart Tannock, “The nostalgic subject turns to
the past to find/construct sources of identity, agency, or community, that are
felt to be lacking, blocked, subverted, or threatened in the present” (Tannock
1995, 454). As such, nostalgia may reveal more about the tenor of the present
than the concrete realities of the past (Davis 1979, 15–16). The triggers for
nostalgia are not merely the sights, sounds, and smells that bring back memo-
ries of the “good old days,” but political, economic, and cultural dissatisfac-
tions with the present. Through nostalgic reminiscence, we reanimate the
past, and in turn, the past renews us. In the words of Svetlana Boym, “Social
utopias of artistic imagination acquire a second life of recycled dreams and
history lessons” (Boym 2010, 81).
Nostalgia’s seventeenth-century definition of a longing for a lost home is
too narrow. Janelle Wilson suggests, “Nostalgia for bygone times does not
11
12 Introduction

require having actually experienced those times” (Wilson 2005, 99). Media
can, in fact, create and sustain nostalgia. Objects like black and white photo-
graphs, vintage clothing, and classic cars also inspire nostalgia for times and
places that appear out of reach. Furthermore, nostalgia is not only a longing
for a distant time and the places and objects that symbolize it but also a
longing for the people who inhabited that past (Boym 2001, ix). In Latin
America and beyond, figures like Che Guevara have not only become revolu-
tionary icons but also drivers of an entire nostalgia market.
Where critics do not agree is whether or not nostalgia can be critical and
nuanced, or if it is essentially a debilitating form of escapism. In the book
The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia (1989), David Lowenthal claims
that nostalgia “tells it like it like it wasn’t” (18). He summarizes some scath-
ing critiques of nostalgia: “the victim of nostalgia is worse than a reaction-
ary; he is an incurable sentimentalist. Afraid of the future, he is also afraid to
face the truth about the past. Nostalgists are not merely wrong; they are
warped. Their temperamental aversion to the rough and tumble, the complex-
ity and turmoil of modern life betrays an emotional inability to engage with
reality” (Lowenthal 1989, 20). The perception that nostalgia inhibits the
subject from living in the present has prompted many critics to relate nostal-
gia with melancholia, a subjective distress, and sorrow that arises from loss.
For many, to be nostalgic is merely to dwell on the past, or to embrace the
kitschy culture of curiosities from yesteryear.
Nostalgia’s detractors not only identify it with regression, paralysis, and
melancholia, they often recognize it as a condition of the political right-wing.
Lowenthal persuasively argues, however, that, “the view of nostalgia as a
self-serving, chauvinist, right-wing version of the past foisted by the privi-
leged and propertied likewise neglects half the facts. The left no less than the
right espouses nostalgia” (28). Lowenthal recognizes that the reductive lens
of nostalgia exists on both sides of the political spectrum, but he stops short
of identifying different types of nostalgia.
Two foundational books that challenge common assumptions about nos-
talgia are Yearning for Yesterday (1979) by American sociologist Fred Davis
and The Future of Nostalgia (2001) by Russian-American cultural critic
Svetlana Boym. The pioneering work by Davis lays the foundation for “as-
cending orders” of nostalgia in both personal and collective memory. The
first order he describes as “simple nostalgia,” or the “subjective state that
harbors the largely unexamined belief that things were better (more beauti-
ful) (healthier) (happier) (more civilized) (more exciting) then than now.”
(Davis 1979, 18). This “unabashed assertion of the beautiful past and the
unattractive present” contrasts with the second-order of nostalgia, which Da-
vis terms “reflexive nostalgia,” or a hesitant longing that “contemplates the
apparent contradictions of remembered experience and historical judgment”
(Davis 1979, 22). Reflection “adds dimension to and enriches the simple
 Introduction 13

nostalgic reaction, making of it in its reflexivity a more complex human

activity that can better comprehend ourselves and our pasts” (Davis 1979,
24).
Over two decades later, Boym breathed new life into the debate in The
Future of Nostalgia, conceptualizing the critical potential of “reflective nos-
talgia” in contrast to the “restorative” type. Whereas Davis mostly focuses on
the 1970s nostalgia wave that emerged in the United States, Boym’s point of
departure is the demise of the Soviet Union in the 1990s and the nostalgic
reinterpretations of political revolution in its wake. The author’s reach is
wide, including reflections on objects ranging from architectural structures
and films to legends and anecdotes. For Boym, “restorative nostalgia” is
essentially a prideful history without any shame, “an abdication of personal
responsibility, a guilt-free homecoming, an ethical and aesthetic failure”
(Boym 2001, xiv). It unconsciously ignores memory gaps and assumes
shared political beliefs and values. It upholds the idea of absolute truth that
exists “at the core of recent national and religious revivals; it knows two
main plots—the return to origins and the conspiracy” (Boym 2001, xviii).
Boym associates right-wing politics with a longing for “traditional” family
values and roles, which serve as euphemisms for the uncritical adherence to
essentialist ideologies and stereotyped identities.
Boym also recognizes that despite nostalgia’s apparent absence from the
revolutionary lexicon, Marx himself drew from the restorative nostalgic
mode through an “attachment to ‘primitive communism’ before capitalist
exploitation, and to the heroes of the past, Spartacus and Robin Hood”
(Boym 2001, 59). She observes the use of restorative nostalgia as a galvaniz-
ing force to encourage revolutionary support; however, she also identifies an
alternative nostalgic mode that she links to progressive politics. “Reflective”
nostalgia casts aspersions on national myths and the “reestablishment of
stasis”: “The focus here is not on recovery of what is perceived to be an
absolute truth but on the meditation on history and passage of time” (Boym
2011, 49). Like Davis, Boym objects to critics who assert that there is an
inherent contradiction between affective longing and critical thinking. As
Historian Patrick Hutton explains, Boym shows how reflective nostalgia has
become “a way to revisit and assess the meaning of the dreamwork that lay
behind the projects of oppositional movements during the Soviet era” (Hut-
ton 2013, 5).
The writings of Walter Benjamin and Fredric Jameson also stand out in
the bibliography on nostalgia. In “Postmodernism and Consumer Society,”
Jameson frames the ‘nostalgia mode’ as ‘an alarming and pathological symp-
tom of a [consumer capitalist] society that has become incapable of dealing
with time and history’ (Jameson 1985b, 117). Taking as examples glossy
Hollywood films like American Graffiti (1973) that sanitize images of the
past to deliver a “feel-good” escape, Jameson warns against uncritical remi-
14 Introduction

niscence based on traditional stereotypes. These insights also inform his

essay “Nostalgia for the Present” in Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of
Late Capitalism (Jameson 1990). In an earlier article, however, Jameson
claims that nostalgia can be a source of inspiration for struggle against status
quo beliefs to the extent that it embraces a historicizing perspective (Jameson
1969). In “Walter Benjamin, or nostalgia,” he evokes Benjamin’s notion of
the “dustbin of history” to uphold the act of salvaging still relevant expres-
sions of consciousness like those associated with Modernism. As Susannah
Radstone suggests, “While Benjamin’s writings on the aura and lost modes
of storytelling have been construed as nostalgic for past ways of life, Jame-
son’s decrying of postmodern nostalgia sits beside his own nostalgia, not
least for older modes of nostalgia (Radstone 2010, 188).

UNSETTLING NOSTALGIA

The critics that I have cited are well known, but countless others have grap-
pled with the meaning of nostalgia. It is no longer innovative to argue that
nostalgia is much more than the uncritical idealization usually identified with
it. Nevertheless, the topic of nostalgia is far from exhausted. This book
challenges readers to broaden their perception by asking how nostalgia might
emerge as an unsettling way of regarding the past as well as a thought-
provoking form of representation in the aftermath of collective trauma. This
book also reframes nostalgia by asking how the remembering subject’s
understanding of categories of identity and hierarchies of power shape long-
ing. Nostalgic return is framed here as a voyage in memory that is intersected
by the remembering subject’s understanding of power. To long for certain
places and milieus involves perceptions of times embedded in political strug-
gles to either uphold or upend unequal power relations. In other words, when
it comes to nostalgia, gender matters, as do other categories of identity.
Questions involving gender, sexuality, and class, among others, permeate the
nostalgically imagined past. Such longing also bespeaks the remembering
subject’s sense of dissatisfaction with the social conditions of their own
present. (DiGiovanni 16, 2017).
Central to this book is a feminist perspective that emphasizes the signifi-
cance of the intersectional makeup of identities and the many ways in which
gender, class, sexuality, and political affiliation work to constitute individual
and collective experiences and nostalgic memories of them. 1 If feminist re-
search probes the socially constructed nature of identity, and memory studies
looks into the relationship between remembrance and identity, then it is
pertinent to consider them in tandem to reach a deeper understanding of
nostalgia. Hegemonic and anti-hegemonic cultural narratives shape the per-
spectives of authors and filmmakers and they, in turn, produce films and
 Introduction 15

novels that play a role in the formation of contemporary identities and social
movements. As Nick Hodgin maintains in his book on nostalgia in German
cinema, if one accepts that identity is created, one can begin to investigate
how culture participates in its construction (Hodgin 2011, 3–4).
To capture the complexity of nostalgic longing and its transmission, I
propose the concept of unsettling nostalgia (la nostalgia inquietante). While
this book draws from Boym’s conceptualization of “reflective” and “restora-
tive” nostalgia, it also moves beyond the binary oppositional relationship
between these forms. The introduction and case studies bring out the multiple
manifestations of nostalgia, including the coexistence and tensions between a
reductive “restorative” mode and the more critical and nuanced “reflective”
mode. Given that a more precise lexicon allows for a better understanding of
the dimensions of nostalgia, I define the meaning and scope of unsettling
nostalgia through detailed examinations of literature and film and show how
contrasting types of longing can morph and mesh in unexpected ways.
Whereas Boym holds that reflective nostalgia is characterized by playful
irony and humor and contrasts with melancholic desire, I contend that melan-
cholia can impinge on both reflective and restorative nostalgia. This book
thus refutes the critique of nostalgia as an unproductive rosy idealization of
better personal or national pasts, and melancholia as a destructive form of
memory caused by an unmourned loss and resulting inevitably in paralysis. I
agree with Christian Gundermann, who has expanded the definition of mel-
ancholy by framing it as a form of resistance to closure and detachment. With
a focus on memories of leftist militancies of the 1960s and 1970s in Argenti-
na, his book Actos melancólicos (2008) argues that melancholia can become
a collective force to inspire action rather than an individualistic form of
immobilizing yearning. The authors and filmmakers whose work I examine
compel us to continue to question and expand previous frameworks. The
overlapping and unpredictable combinations of reflective and restorative
nostalgia, which at times also include irony and melancholia, become “unset-
tling nostalgia.” The term implies that the memory maker’s gaze back at once
idealizes the past and disquiets the reader/viewership by showing its com-
plexity through the recollection of uncomfortable memories that generate
productive confrontations with the past. Unsettling nostalgic novels and
films thus contribute to a deeper understanding of the emotional legacies of
political struggles and how stories of resistance might be meaningful and
even mobilizing today.
Unsettling nostalgia is recognizable in characterization, plot, and struc-
ture. Whereas reductive nostalgic novels and films star heroic, mythical,
stereotypical, and one-dimensional characters, unsettling nostalgic works
feature polychromatic, flawed, curious, ambiguous, and contradictory fig-
ures. Plot structures incorporate historical detail not to add a sheen of authen-
ticity to the fictional world of the text, but to question it. They tend to eschew
16 Introduction

formulaic, melodramatic or overtly sentimental tropes and conclusions, pre-

senting instead unconventional and paradoxical turns and endings. Unsettling
nostalgic narratives employ tangential plotlines and metafictional strategies
to show an open attitude towards the past. Narrative self-consciousness per-
mits a space to muse on ambivalences of longing and the existence of contra-
dictions, limitations, and inconsistencies in memory. The depthless restora-
tive structure, by contrast, can be characterized by a flowing aesthetic, which
seeks to tie experiences of the past into lacquered narratives and settling
conclusions.
The term “unsettling nostalgia” functions both as a modified noun and a
verb. As a noun, unsettling nostalgia is an emotionally-charged view of the
past that is also a tool to build critical consciousness, community, and cul-
tures of memory. It is an affective and probing form of transmission that
fissures justificatory narratives of hierarchical power. As a verb, “unsettling
nostalgia” has two meanings. To “unsettle” nostalgia is to destabilize dismis-
sive notions of nostalgia by moving beyond its standard definition as a flat or
false view of a distant era. As an action, the term can also describe the
disruption of a reactionary form of nostalgia for an imagined past grandeur.
To “unsettle” nostalgia is to make visible competing ways of remembering. It
is to transmit a yearning that pushes against the conservative nostalgic dis-
courses that have fueled hardline vindications of unequal power structures.
The concept of unsettling nostalgia gives readers a new lens for interpreta-
tion. While this book focuses specifically on nostalgic responses to social
upheaval in Spain and Chile, it is my hope that Unsettling Nostalgia’s larger
claims bring insight to readers considering other historical contexts as well.

THE COMPELLING COMPARISON OF SPAIN AND CHILE

This book develops the concept of unsettling nostalgia to understand how

authors and filmmakers represent memories of the pre-dictatorial pasts in
Spain and Chile, as well as the anti-fascist resistance to the military regimes
of Francisco Franco (1939–1975) and Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990). Un-
settling nostalgia is a multigenerational response to dictatorial rule and a tool
for survivors and their children to mitigate the sense of loss in the wake of
rupture and displacement. But why is the comparison between Spain and
Chile so compelling? Nostalgia resonates within many historical, cultural,
and geographical contexts, but the rise of nostalgia culture in the context of
contemporary Spain and Chile is striking for its relationship to political
struggles for intersecting forms of social justice. While previous transatlantic
approaches to human rights violations and memory have compared the case
of Spain with others in the Southern Cone, the links between nostalgia and
 Introduction 17

identity as represented in post-dictatorial literature and film have not been

teased out in a transatlantic feminist framework.
Nostalgic depictions of oppositional voices in the wake of authoritarian
rule in Spain and Chile defy the military regimes’ present-day apologists
who defend the attempt to extinguish leftist political goals and identities
through militarized methods of control. Against the post-dictatorial backdrop
of neoliberal capitalism, economic austerity, and widespread political apathy,
nostalgia unfolds in films and novels about the Second Spanish Republic
(1931–1939) and the Chilean Popular Unity (1970–1973), revealing a long-
ing for a time of political awakening and solidarity. Nostalgic cultural pro-
duction seeks to remind the public that the political uprisings of 1930s Spain
and 1960s Chile had their roots in a rejection of a long history of socio-
economic repression of historically marginalized groups. Contemporary au-
thors and filmmakers find in the past a range of political movements that
emerged and attracted supporters that transcended national boundaries. Rev-
olutionary characters, objects, and settings embody a nostalgia for a time of
bonding and commitment to anti-fascist values. They suggest that while
dreams for equality were often rife with contradictions involving ingrained
sexism and racism within the left, countless women and men felt that what
they were experiencing was seismic progressive change.
While the recent surge of nostalgia is visible in the abundance and popu-
larity of historical novels, feature films, and documentaries, it is also true that
nostalgia previously shaped depictions of the Second Republic after the
Spanish Civil War in 1939, as well as portrayals of the Chilean Popular Unity
after the military coup in 1973. Unsettling nostalgic perceptions of the past
emerged as a response to the ravages of war, forced migration, and inner
exile that these military backlashes produced. That is to say, nostalgia is not
an unknown phenomenon in these contexts, but that it has changed over time.
For Spanish and Chilean exiles, nostalgia surfaced as a mournful defense
mechanism and an empowering tool in the remaking of solidarity and the
maintenance of hope for a future return after the military takeovers. For those
who remained, the regimes’ strategy to produce fear and distrust contributed
to the unraveling of countless bonds and collective dreams. Others, however,
sustained relationships and shared aspirations through nostalgic remem-
brance even when public mourning was prohibited. As much as the regimes
sought to fracture the opposition and manipulate history by demonizing the
defeated, they could not entirely erase positive memories of the Second
Republic in Spain and the Popular Unity in Chile.
Today, nostalgic memories of the political awakening associated with
those periods have become a prominent part of a cultural landscape shaped
by a multigenerational population seeking to distance themselves from the
dictatorial past and the patriarchal and capitalist values that have remained in
their wake. Within those socio-political contexts, writers and filmmakers in
18 Introduction

Spain and Chile have produced stories of longing for a pre-dictatorial period,
as well as for a time of resistance during the regimes. Their protagonists are
proponents of the Second Republic and the Popular Unity who conceived of
a social agenda that aimed to dismantle exploitative power structures and
patriarchal forms of culture. Through narrative and cinematic strategies, the
authors and filmmakers foreground real and fictional figures that participated
in the reshaping of society, for instance, by pushing for reforms that granted
women the right to vote, divorce, and hold positions of political power.
Their storylines reveal that such changes did not result in an overnight
shift in sexist and classist ideologies and that reformers often faced backlash
from groups hostile to social transformation. Military elites figure promi-
nently in their narratives and represent an oppressive model of manhood that
required the capacity for violence and fanaticism for the patriarchal nation.
Negative characterizations of militarized figures function as a counterpoint to
the idealized characterizations of the opposition. Authors and filmmakers
often place such narratives within larger stories involving aging survivors
who recollect their struggles to their younger interlocutors. If the main plot-
line is set in the present, it serves to set the stage for a second narrative
situated in the past that may be retrieved only through the fragmented pro-
cess of remembrance, archival research, and oral history. The frame story
thus leads readers back to smaller stories, each conveying a sense of loss and
nostalgia.
The novel O lapis do carpinteiro (1998) (El lápiz del carpintero) by
Manuel Rivas exemplifies these literary strategies. The narrative’s point of
departure is around 1998 when a Galician journalist receives an assignment
to interview an aging former doctor and political activist who was impris-
oned for his defense of the Second Republic. The journalist’s political disen-
chantment and ignorance of the Spanish Civil War set up what becomes the
development of his own critical consciousness through attentive listening
(DiGiovanni 2017, 19). The pretext of the imminent death of a Republican
survivor gives way to a journey in time and a transgenerational dialogue that
contextualizes political persecution and commemorates the resilience of the
defeated Republicans. The author’s characterizations show how nostalgia for
a revolutionary epoch hinges upon the reconstruction of oppositional iden-
tities. Militarized fascist figures are measured against Republican characters,
whose depiction depends on their explicit disavowal of violence and critique
of social structures built on inequality. But Rivas shows that memorial recon-
struction is not a simple task. The novel highlights the gaps in memory
through temporal shifts and the conflicting perspectives of alternating narra-
tors. Rather than a set of experiences seared in a memory bank and un-
changed over time, recollections are rendered as recreations from the point of
remembering that emerge from and also generate individual and collective
identity. The author uses these strategies to explore how memory and nostal-
 Introduction 19

gia originate and transform over time in a creative and collective process of
reconstruction.
Nostalgic memory also inhabits those narratives of lived experience that
reflect on attachments to an imperfect, but hopeful past that was torn apart. “I
was that time, I tell myself, and that scene worthy of prayer.” (Brodsky 2017,
8, my translation). These words, written in the new preface of Últimos días
de la historia by Roberto Brodsky, could serve as a motto of a generation of
dissident writers in Chile after 1973. The scene with which he so profoundly
identifies is the September 11 military coup, a rupture forever marking a
before and after. It is significant that Brodsky’s novel, which I analyze in this
book, opens with an epigraph by the Spanish novelist Juan Benet
(1927–1993) whose father was killed in the Republican zone in the Spanish
Civil War. Benet writes, “a day dawns, without a doubt, when the past
emerges in a moment of uncertainty.” For Benet, dissonant memories inevi-
tably seep through “ridiculing and debunking the fragile and sterile chimeri-
cal and unsatisfied condition of a tortured and fleeting present.” Brodsky
echoes Benet’s 1961 collection of short stories Nunca llegarás a nada (You
Will Never Amount to Anything) to open his novel and set forth a reflection
on the mechanisms of memory in the wake of the Pinochet dictatorship.
Nostalgia in Brodsky’s book is troubling and forms part of an alternative way
of interpreting the past, one that is imbued with ambiguity and irony, chal-
lenging at every turn the official political discourse of reconciliation after the
transition.
The significance of this evocation of Brodsky’s novel is threefold. First, it
serves to illustrate the existing parallels between Spanish and Chilean politi-
cal and literary histories. Second, it underscores the elusive and obstinate
nature of memory and nostalgia and their complex linkages to traumatic
experience. Third, it points to the interdependent relationship between nostal-
gia and identity. Peeling back the layers of examples like this one, Unsettling
Nostalgia goes beyond the preliminary work that stresses the value of untold
stories of political conflict by exploring how the remembering subject’s
understanding of hierarchies of power shape nostalgic narratives and collec-
tive identities. Nostalgic discourses either conjure sexist, classist, and racist
visions of roots and nation or, conversely, appeal to unfulfilled dreams of
revolutionary structural change (DiGiovanni 2017, 16).
Nostalgic discourses either conjure classist, sexist, and nationalist visions
of roots and nation or, conversely, appeal to unfulfilled dreams of revolution-
ary structural change (DiGiovanni 16, 2017). A transatlantic feminist per-
spective expands our understanding of post-dictatorial memory, which is a
topic often regarded from a monocultural or national standpoint. Without
collapsing difference, this book pushes against the limits of narrowly con-
strued interpretations of dictatorial histories and discovers resemblances,
thereby generating insights that would not be possible if these areas were
20 Introduction

investigated separately. The comparative framework invites reflection upon

the parallels between authoritarian policies of political, cultural, economic,
and gendered repression, and comments on the variations between affective
and memorial responses in narrative and film. Historical time, location, and
cultural context influence the authors’ and directors’ process of remem-
brance. From the vantage point of the post-dictatorial present, authors seem
more compelled to extract stories of bravery from the repressive past than
those living within it. A comparative study not only helps us to understand
how related ideologies shaped the regimes’ violence, but also how literature
and film might intervene, expose, and subvert such violence through the
reconstruction of counter memories.

NOSTALGIA, GENDER, AND GENRE

Nostalgia for a pre-dictatorial past and periods of resistance in Spain and

Chile bespeaks a desire for reconnection after military backlash and the
recuperation of severed political goals. On the one hand, nostalgia can exces-
sively idealize the past and in doing so play a worrisome role in generalizing
and distancing the past from the present, rendering it irrelevant. But nostalgia
can also have the opposite effect if it emerges alongside conflicted and criti-
cal memories of personal or collective shortcomings and incongruencies in
situations, behaviors, and convictions. In this way, nostalgia might spur di-
alogue about the multiple meanings of the past and about the ethics of re-
membering. Returning to Boym, we observe a “nostalgia for what could have
been; it is not a nostalgia for the ideal past, but for the present perfect and its
lost potential” (Boym 2001, 21).
One way that this book engages forms of nostalgia that evade stasis is
through memorial accounts written and filmed by women both during or
after the Franco and Pinochet dictatorships. To paraphrase Gina Herrmann’s
article “Voices of the Vanquished: Leftist Women and the Spanish Civil
War,” when women narrate the messiness of war, they effectively interrupt
certain static historiographies and mythical representations (Herrmann 2003,
11). The digressive, complicated, incomplete, and fractured nature of such
accounts makes them at once nostalgic and instructive. Herrmann makes a
persuasive point: “If we really want to look at war in all its complexity, then,
women’s narratives of conflict, which struggle against the limits of recogniz-
able generic models, are the most experientially affective representational
models that can give us access to the phenomenon of war” (Herrmann 2003,
11).
Women’s memorial accounts of revolution and defeat reveal the vital
relationship between nostalgia, critical thought, emotion, and identity. They
often explore the features of gender politics on the Left in Spain and Chile
 Introduction 21

and, as I will argue in the case studies, they reveal how gender politics have
been arguably more complex and diverse than the visible mechanisms of
gender hierarchies that characterized the ideologies of the Pinochet and Fran-
co regimes. Some of the works in this book look to the Second Republic
(1931–1939) and the Popular Unity (1970–1973) as times of awakening,
forward-moving momentum, and shared commitments to deeper forms of
justice. But they also show that in many ways dominant ideologies of the
Left remained masculinist to the extent that they often ignored or devalued
the struggle for gender equality. Works by Almudena Grandes, Dulce
Chacón, Carmen Castillo, and Carolina Astudillo, all studied in this book,
underscore the attempt by both women and men of the Left to subvert power
structures and dominant influences of the Church and state on gender norms
and sexual mores, but they also point to the disjuncture between theory and
practice.
Their works dramatize findings that historians and critics like Florencia
Mallon, Isabella Cosse, and Gina Herrmann have onserved regarding ten-
sions around patriarchal and heteronormative views on family and sexuality
among the Left in the Southern Cone and Spain. Pointing out contradiction
does not invalidate attempts to upend dominant forms of culture but recog-
nizes the pervasiveness of patriarchal ideology that frames men as political
leaders and women as mothers and wives. When post-dictatorial accounts
written by and about women shed light on such anxieties and incongruencies,
they convey what Boym calls a “nostalgia for what could have been” (Boym
2001, 21). Of course, it would be short-sighted to argue that only women’s
accounts reveal troubled (i.e., complex) versus untroubled (i.e., simple)
forms of nostalgia. The selection of novels and films in this study shows that
representations created by both women and men have the potential to either
reinsert dominant perspectives or conversely run counter to them by includ-
ing multiple and dissonant points of view.
Authors and filmmakers have used many genres including testimony,
memoir, poetry, novels, fictional film, and documentary to represent fraught
memories of revolution and resistance. Unsettling Nostalgia focuses specifi-
cally on the novel and the documentary film. While fictional narrative may
seem to be an obvious choice, documentary film may not since it is often
viewed as an objective genre. This book shows that documentaries also trans-
mit nostalgia through narrative voiceover, interviews, musical score, and
dramatic reconstruction, all of which are carefully selected, edited, and
pieced together to convey a message. To paraphrase Belinda Smaill in The
Documentary: Politics, Emotion, Culture, where the expression of injured
identities is concerned, documentary plays a small but important part in
presenting avenues for imagining future possibilities of social transformation
that further public debate (Smaill 2010, 70). Viewing nostalgic fictional nar-
rative alongside documentary film engenders a reflection on the differences
22 Introduction

and similarities between the often-unrecognized strategies that communicate

nostalgic longing. Polyphony or the inclusion of counterpoints, for instance,
is a tool used by both novelists and documentarians to foreground complex-
ity.
A feminist analysis of the critical potential of nostalgic novels and docu-
mentaries forges a necessary path away from the dismissive view of nostalgia
as an unproductive and irrational form of memory. For many, to be nostalgic
is to see the past through a rose-tinted lens, an expression with conspicuous
gendered underpinnings. Rejecting nostalgia altogether means disregarding
the emotions as a source of knowledge, which feeds into patriarchal notions
that diminish the value of what is deemed feminine. Narrative fiction and
documentary film have the potential to encourage readers and viewers to
imagine a principal place for the emotions in critical remembrance of sys-
tems of repression, as well as resistance to them. Megan Boler reminds us
that feminism has long insisted that “processes of learning, social change,
and education are intimately bound up with feeling” (Boler 2015, 1491).
Chandra Mohanty makes a similar point when she argues that history, memo-
ry, and emotion are significant cognitive elements in the construction of self-
reflective selves that lead to a rethinking of patriarchal, heterosexist, coloni-
al, racist, and capitalist legacies (Mohanty 2003, 8). Pointing to the defense
of the emotions as a wellspring of knowledge serves to invite reflection upon
the crossroads between the emotional and the nostalgic and how these might
contribute to our understanding of the past. To welcome new ideas about
nostalgia is to chip away at a patriarchal structure of memory that devalues
concepts associated with femininity. Memory and critical consciousness are
activated not by overcoming the emotions, but by embracing them.

RESTORATIVE NOSTALGIA IN FRANCO’S SPAIN AND

PINOCHET’S CHILE

If nostalgia for a time of political enthusiasm and mobilization bespeaks a

rejection of the political apathy of the present in Spain and Chile, it is also a
rejection of the nostalgia of the Pinochet and Franco regimes. The military
governments exploited nostalgia in their discourses to further their political
agendas and legitimize their authority. They used a right-wing nostalgic dis-
course to feed classist, sexist, and racist fantasies of roots and nation. It is
precisely the well-known nationalist version of nostalgia that has compelled
many critics to condemn all nostalgia as a political instrument that ignores
the contradictions and complexities of the past. To understand present-day
nostalgia, we must contextualize it and also understand the nostalgic dis-
courses of the military regimes. By examining the role of nostalgic discourse
in the making of the military dictatorships, as well as the counter-discourses
 Introduction 23

of nostalgic longing conveyed by political exiles and their children, I address

political systems and artistic movements within a more comprehensive politi-
cal and historical framework.
While this book ventures beyond Boym’s canonical text by developing
the concept of “unsettling nostalgia,” it is instructive to pause on her defini-
tion of restorative nostalgia to understand the military regimes’ strategies to
justify dictatorial rule. Boym argues, “Restorative nostalgia characterizes
national and nationalist revivals all over the world, which engage in the
antimodern myth-making of history by means of a return to national symbols
and myths and, occasionally, through swapping conspiracy theories” (Boym
2001, 41). This form of nostalgia has been used extensively in political
discourse as a rhetorical device to establish the belief in a shared past. If
restorative nostalgia validates national and international rivalries and sanc-
tions the repression of attempts to agitate for social change, then “restora-
tive” nostalgia is the proper lens through which to analyze the culture of the
military regimes.
In the anthology Narratives of Nostalgia, Gender and Nationalism
(1997), Jean Pickering posits that “nostalgia is a constitutive element of both
gender and nationalism,” and that “modification of one makes changes in the
other two” (Pickering 1997, 207). These insights serve as a springboard to
discuss the overlapping relationship between nostalgia, gender, and national-
ism in Spain and Chile. As Jo Labanyi points out, the Franco regime re-
sponded to the loss of colonial dominance and Spain’s sidelining within
Europe by fixating on lost glory (Hamilakis and Labanyi 2008, 9). It is for
that reason that Labanyi suggests that traditionally memory has been asso-
ciated with authoritarian and strongly nationalist regimes. From my perspec-
tive, it is restorative nostalgia that best describes the Franco regime’s glorifi-
cation of a so-called united Cathoic “patria” of the fifteenth century. That
discourse functioned as a weapon to undermine Basque, Catalan and Gali-
cian nationalisms. It also served to delegitimize secularist movements and to
uphold Spain’s hierarchical order based on gender, class, and race. The paral-
lels with Chile are staggering. As the pace of social reform accelerated dur-
ing the Second Republic and the Popular Unity to empower women and the
working classes, reactionary “restorative” nostalgia emerged as a remedy to
reassure traditionalists and to bolster the promise to decelerate social decay.
In Chile, Pinochet framed the democratic transformation initiated by Salva-
dor Allende as aberrant and looked to the nineteenth-century, strong-handed
Portalian state characterized by autocratic methods of control (Constable and
Valenzuela 1991, 70). At the same time, the Chilean dictator summoned the
memory of Francoist Spain to vindicate an anti-communist discourse and
capitalist agenda within the 1970s Cold War in Latin America.
Under Franco, a nostalgia for the imperial past as opposed to the “degen-
erate” state of the present became a strong current in public discourse. For
24 Introduction

the consolidators of the regime, the past became synonymous with the “gold-
en age” and modernity with the “Fall.” Nostalgia served the crucial function
of establishing the military rebels as the “martyrs.” It also helped reshape the
sufferings of the Civil War into a symbol of patriotism (DiGiovanni 2012a,
39). The bloodshed of the insurgents was not only legitimized but framed as
inevitable in the history of “mankind’s” redemption. Within that teleological
framework, every time there was a deviation, there was bound to be a cru-
sade to silence dissent, and its justification was beyond question. As historian
Paul Preston argues, this vision of the past, “justified the need for ‘purifica-
tion,’ a euphemism for the most sweeping physical, economic and psycho-
logical repression” (Preston 2006, 305). Preston adds, “Within months of the
end of hostilities, a massive ‘History of the Crusade’ was being published in
weekly parts, glorifying the heroism of the victors and portraying the van-
quished as the dupes of Moscow” (Preston 2006, 4). The education system,
strictly under the Church’s reinstated control after the war, also played a
pivotal role in children’s socialization and political indoctrination.
In her book-length essay Courtship Customs in Postwar Spain (1987,
2004) Spanish novelist Carmen Martín Gaite (1925–2000) renders visible the
nostalgia that shaped Spain’s postwar political discourse and served to define
perceptions of family, gender, and sexuality, and also to justify Spain’s eco-
nomic crisis that disproportionately impacted the working class. She cites
Franco’s 1945 speech that venerated Spain’s “blessed backwardness,” pro-
claiming, “Our revolution made it possible for Spain to return to her true
essence” (Martín Gaite 2004, 21). Franco sought to “restore” traditional
Catholic patriarchal values by eliminating divorce, and religious and political
freedoms, which he exclaimed were things of the reds. But at the same time,
the regime’s negative reading of modernity was inconsistent. While the
wealthy landowners, the Catholic Church and the monarchists had empha-
sized the importance of embracing tradition and religion, the Phalange, in-
dustrialists, and bankers, on the other hand, tended to advocate social mod-
ernization within totalitarian structures inspired by fascism (Labanyi 2007,
92). Groups on the right came together through their hostility towards the
Second Republic’s agenda to “better the economic and legal positions of the
working classes and women” (Labanyi 2007, 92)
The unequivocally gendered nature of the Franco regime’s nostalgic dis-
course conceived of men as soldiers, nation builders, and scholars, while
women were cast as wives, bearers of children and caregivers. The Second
Republic (1931–1939), with its reforms to the long-established patriarchal
system of values and identities, was equated with the “Fall,” and as such
inevitably tied to the sin of Eve—the undoing of “mankind” due to the lust of
a woman. During the regime, this religious dogma fed into gender norms that
called for the subjugation of women. As evinced in media representations,
women’s bodies became the terrain on which the tenets of Catholic virtue
 Introduction 25

and chauvinism were written (DiGiovanni 40, 2012a). A network of institu-

tions, customs, and laws that prescribed passive and pious female behavior
served the socially conservative ideology, which sought to undermine at-
tempts made to challenge traditional gender roles. This socio-political move
backward was particularly demoralizing for non-Catholic, leftist women who
saw in the Second Republic a path towards gender and class equality.
Similar to the case of Spain, the subjugation of the political left in Chile
was bound up with a restorative nostalgic discourse defending hierarchies of
power and male superiority. In El peso de la noche: Nuestra frágil fortaleza
histórica (1997) historian Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt Letelier describes how the
Pinochet regime evoked the strong-handed state influenced by Diego Por-
tales (1793–1837), the conservative Chilean minister of the interior, states-
man and entrepreneur who became highly influential in the aftermath of
Chile’s revolt against the Spanish empire. Portales and his successors gov-
erned through the 1860s frequently enforcing repression to control objection
to policies including the reduction of taxes, the removal of regulations to
industry, and the expansion of foreign trade, all of which secured the maxi-
mum benefit of the landed elite. Fast-forward to the 1970s and Pinochet
revives Portales for a common end: to champion class hierarchies and patri-
archal power.
Restorative nostalgia served to deteriorate the Popular Unity’s social pro-
grams by privatizing state-controlled industries and eliminating state welfare
institutions. A nostalgic interpretation of the Portalian state also became a
discursive tool to unify the uneasy alliance between the landed elite, the
military, the technocrats, and the powerful Opus Dei. As in the case of
twentieth-century Spain, power struggles among groups on the right were
outweighed by a disdain for the Popular Unity’s agenda to change the eco-
nomic and legal positions of the working classes and women that began in
the 1920s and developed during Allende’s tenure. The financial crisis of the
1970s, which stemmed in part from pressures from the CIA, the Nixon ad-
ministration and U.S. economic elites, became central to a nostalgic dis-
course of “purification” and elimination of a series of “degenerative” social-
ist structures.
Decades before the 1973 coup, Chilean conservative political parties
closely watched the Spanish Civil War and for the Nationalist militarized
efforts to bring an end to the progressive agenda of the Second Republic.
Kirsten Weld correctly argues that “The Falangist strain of Spain’s insurrec-
tionary coalition had an explicitly transnational dimension, encouraging the
strengthening of cultural ties between Spain and erstwhile colonies and ap-
pealing, in a clearly racialized fashion, to those Latin Americans who defined
their heritage as peninsular” (Weld 2018, 84). Later, during the 1970s Pino-
chet looked nostalgically to the Franco regime as a model authoritarian cor-
porative state. As Weld states, “The Civil War—or at least one interpretation
26 Introduction

of it, in which the military had purged Spain of communism in a kind of

Christian reconquest—was a key component of the paradigm that some anti-
Salvador Allende revanchists used to understand their world” (Weld 2018,
77). Upon Franco’s death on November 20, 1975, Pinochet traveled to Spain
where King Juan Carlos and the right-wing press Pueblo received him. In an
interview, the Chilean dictator stated, “I came to Spain because I wanted to
pay tribute to a man who also fought against communism.” 2 The newspaper
article brings out the collusion between the monarchy and the Spanish and
Chilean military dictatorships, as well as the intersections between political
agendas and nostalgic discourses. Pinochet was quoted stating: “If the Com-
munists, who always lurk in the shadows, do not cause problems, Spain will
achieve great goals and once again be a great country as it was in the past”
(Pueblo 1975). 3
One year later in 1976, Pinochet explained to Henry Kissinger that the
Chilean regime was a participant in a long-term transatlantic struggle: “It is a
further stage of the same conflict which erupted into the Spanish Civil War”
(Weld 2018, 78). Weld also underscores the influential role of Francoist
thought in the development of the political ideology of Jaime Guzmán, one
of Pinochet’s closest advisors and author of Chile’s 1980 constitution. “Gre-
mialismo, Guzmán’s philosophy turned political movement, was central to
the anti-Salvador Allende opposition and explicitly rooted in the military
nationalism, conservative Catholic social thought, and mythology of a glori-
ous Hispanic cultural inheritance that had undergirded the Nationalist upris-
ing and that Franco had used to legitimate his rule” (Weld 2018, 78). Since
Guzmán played a pivotal role in the construction of neoliberal ideology in
Chile, it is important to also note, as Michael Lazzara does in the book Civil
Obedience: Complicity and Complacency in Chile since Pinochet (2018),
that another one of Guzmán’s key influences was José Antonio Primo de
Rivera, founder of the Spanish fascist party the Falange. “Such early influ-
ences resulted in a special mixture of conservative Catholicism and right-
wing ideology that would lead Guzmán to reject the tenets of Liberation
Theology that had taken root throughout Latin America in the 1960s” (Laz-
zara 2018, 59).
What is also striking is that in both cases, the reproduction of gender
norms informed the restorative nostalgic discourse within the context of state
violence. In Chile, the nation under the Popular Unity was discursively con-
structed by the consolidators of the regime as both a diseased body and a
family in crisis that required the leadership of a strong father figure that
would return health and order to Chile’s progeny. 4 In this way, in both Spain
and Chile, modernity was viewed as a corrupted female body. At the same
time, the maternal figure, always subordinate to the male, also became a
powerful patriotic metaphor. By seizing the right to delineate the nation and
gender roles, the insurrectionists in both contexts justified the purging of
 Introduction 27

nonconformist, revolutionary women who were masculinized through the

rhetoric of the regime while dissident men were conversely deemed “unman-
ly” (i.e., feminine) and consequently dehumanized.
This restorative nostalgic discourse resonated strongly in Chile with the
neo-fascist paramilitary group Patria y Libertad (Fatherland and Liberty),
which emerged as a nationalist faction calling for the return of a “caudillo”
state. If the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) aimed to create class-
consciousness and prompt structural, economic, and cultural change, Patria y
Libertad emphasized the counter-revolutionary language of authoritarian pa-
triotism and tradition (Ensalaco 2000, 19). This vocabulary, coupled with the
group’s clandestine operations of infrastructure sabotage, instilled fear and
radicalized many Chileans, convincing them of the need to “return” to order
and support military intervention along with its reestablishment of political,
class, and gender hierarchies. Echoes of the Spanish fascist discourse are
hard to ignore. In both instances, we observe the galvanizing effects of resto-
rative nostalgia and its broader implications in the consolidation of power
networks that quelled opposing voices.

NOSTALGIA AND EXILE AFTER THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

To this point, I have defined various forms of nostalgia and focused on how
the reactionary “restorative” sort played an instrumental role in the reinforce-
ment of the classist and patriarchal ideologies with which the defenders of
the Franco and Pinochet dictatorships identified. A restorative nostalgia
helped shape the gendered lexicon of the right-wing military regimes in
Spain and Chile and served to re-establish the authority of the military, the
Church, and the economic elites. In light of these insights, we now turn to the
voices of the opposition in exile and the transatlantic cultural exchanges
between Chile and Spain from the 1930s through the 1970s to trace how
nostalgia emerged differently. By examining how authors and filmmakers in
exile have sought to subvert the discourses of the regimes, we contextualize
contrasting forms of longing in different periods and move beyond vague and
homogenizing critiques of nostalgia. Instead of framing nostalgia as a mere
feature of the late twentieth-century, this discussion explores historical speci-
ficity, heterogeneity, and the genealogy of multiple forms of nostalgia and
their expression in literature and film.
In contrast with the conservative nostalgic vision that called for a home-
coming to traditional national identities and the “natural” power hierarchies
that shaped them, leftwing nostalgia was, and remains, arguably more com-
plex and difficult to categorize. When describing the differences between
right-wing and left-wing nostalgia in Spain and Chile, monochrome divisions
between restorative and reflective nostalgia fall short. That is because the
28 Introduction

idealizing narrative of heroism and sacrifice has been a defining feature in

many accounts of anti-fascist resistance. In other words, if we view “restora-
tive” nostalgia as a form of memory that emerges in celebratory discourses
that iron out troubling incongruent memories to uphold a heroic version of
the past, then this form of nostalgia has not belonged to any single ideology.
Within the many pages of memoirs, novels, and collections of poetry written
by uprooted Spanish and Chilean exiles or by dissidents that endured politi-
cal and social destruction from within, we see nostalgic responses to loss that
both demonstrate Boym’s definitions and complicate them. For that reason,
the term unsettling nostalgia is a more appropriate tool to describe these early
nostalgic voices as well as those that came later in the post-dictatorial period.
In the context of exile, unsettling nostalgia describes an emotional and
intellectual response to the profound collective dissatisfactions within the
dictatorial conquest perceived as the antithesis of the shattered horizons of
the Republican past. We find one striking example in the poetry of Luis
Cernuda (1902–1963), whose “Díptico español” (“Spanish Diptych”), consti-
tutes the epigraph to El lector de Julio Verne (2012) by Almudena Grandes, a
contemporary novel that I will analyze later in this book. I highlight this
example because it is a precursor of the post-revolutionary modern-day nos-
talgia at the center of Unsettling Nostalgia. The image of the diptych in the
title, with its two hinged wooden panels that close like a book, evokes the
distant past and a longing to retrieve it. The poem represents the complexity
of leftist postwar nostalgia, conveyed in literature in the immediate aftermath
of the Spanish Civil War.
Poetry like Cernuda’s offers a window to understand an earlier experience
of nostalgia and allows us to consider how this previous form has influenced
contemporary writers like Almudena Grandes and Dulce Chacón. For these
authors, Cernuda has symbolized non-conformism and resistance to the au-
thoritarian patriarchal state on numerous levels. Even before the Second
Republic, his poetry defied societal norms by giving voice to non-heteronor-
mative identities and desires. In “Díptico español,” published in Desolación
de la quimera (1956–1962) and later used by Almudena Grandes in El lector
de Julio Verne (2012), Cernuda recalls from exile in Mexico earlier contexts
of immense potential in Spain. “For you, the real Spain is not that obscene
and depressing one, where today the scum rule as masters, but rather the
alive and always noble Spain that Galdós created in his books. It is that Spain
that comforts us and cures this one” (cited in Grandes 2012, my translation). 5
Cernuda not only locates himself within a wider political story but also
reaches out to his fellow compatriots whose sense of community was in
crisis.
Cernuda’s nostalgic discourse subverts the Francoist claim to an eternal
National-Catholic identity by recalling the age of the First Republic
(1873–1874). Its celebration of the nineteenth-century realist novelist Benito
 Introduction 29

Pérez Galdós (1843–1920) “consoles” and “cures” the deficient postwar

present. Nostalgia becomes a personal and collective lens through which to
interpret the lost Spanish Civil War in juxtaposition with the retrograde here
and now of the Franco dictatorship. Cernuda uses the two-Spains trope to
explain how a nation with vast progressive vision could become a site of
stagnation. On the one hand, the poem adopts an arguably flattening nostal-
gic lens that mythifies the pre-dictatorial past and mourns the loss of the
distant Republic. On the other hand, this kind of nostalgia contrasts with the
regime’s “restorative” nostalgia to the extent that it disrupts the conservative
colonial gaze. As Cecilia Enjuto Rangel points out in Cities in Ruins, the
nostalgia that characterizes Modern poets like Cernuda differs from the resto-
rative sort by presenting a critical reevaluation of the imperial past and its
monumentalizing aesthetic (Enjuto Rangel 2010, 4–5). 6
The nostalgic vision of the Second Republic that characterizes Cernuda’s
“Díptico español” also permeates Pablo Neruda’s well-known España en el
corazón (1937), as well as the less canonical reflections of Roser Bru i Llop,
a Catalan Spanish Civil War exile who arrived in Chile on the Winnipeg in
1939. As noted in the prologue, Neruda organized the transport of over 2,100
Spanish Civil War exiles to Chile after serving as a diplomat in Spain during
the Second Republic. Among them were the Catalan painters Roser Bru i
Llop and José Balmes, both cited in the article Por obra y gracia del Winni-
peg by Julio Gálvez Barraza (2001). 7 Looking back on the experience of
exile in Chile, Bru i Llop writes, “Life was made with births and deaths. But
we learned to belong. It was a ‘discovery’ of America upside down and
without winners” (Gálvez Barraza 2001, my translation). 8 She recasts exile
in Chile as a journey and undermines the colonialist rhetoric of the Francoist
victors through a politics of solidarity. If the National Catholic regime waged
war for a restoration of a single Spanish identity based on power hierarchies
of gender, class, and nation, then figures like Bru i Llop and Cernuda mused
on the experience and expression of difference and exchange.

NOSTALGIA AS A TOOL OF POLITICAL MOBILIZATION AND

TRANSATLANTIC SOLIDARITY

Nostalgia emerged among Spanish exiles in Chile as a longing to recover

broken pieces of a revolutionary past left in ruins after the Spanish Civil War,
but it also became a powerful tool and a source of inspiration throughout the
1960s. It was a time when many Catalans, Spaniards, and Chileans mobilized
in social networks within Chile’s shifting political climate. Nostalgia for the
Second Republic surged during Chile’s period of socialist mobilization
(1970–1973) and helped shape the political discourse to rally support for the
Popular Unity government. Old transnational kinships were reignited
30 Introduction

through nostalgia, and new ones were born. For many Chileans and Span-
iards, it was part of a long trajectory of shared struggle. The folk-inspired
socially committed music of La nueva canción chilena (Chilean New Song)
emerged within anti-imperialist and indigenous justice movements. At the
same time in Catalonia, the Nova Cançó (New Song) developed in dialogue
with Spanish and Catalan republican exiles during the late Franco period. In
1969 singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat performed Cantares live in Chile
at the Teatro Monumental and nostalgically paid tribute to the memory of the
exiled poet Antonio Machado while effectively voicing a transatlantic poli-
tics of solidarity. Chilean artists, writers and musicians like Rolando Alarcón
(1929–1973) re-animated empowering memories of the Spanish Civil War
through the reproduction of Republican hymns.
Listening to Spanish Civil War songs like “Si me quieres escribir” in the
context of the Chilean Popular Unity was a nostalgic act that inspired visions
of collective dreams for social transformation. Songs, images, and stories
brought by Spanish exiles in 1939 moved from the private to the public
sphere in a visible way by 1969 in Chile, allowing a new generation to
imagine a continuity with the aspirations of the Second Republic. At once,
leftist nostalgia seemed to laud the onward movement of revolutionary histo-
ry and the dawn of a new era. As Boym reminds us, the word revolution
means “both cyclical repetition and the radical break” (Boym 2001, 19).
Ritual commemoration linked Chileans and Spaniards with various genera-
tional claims to an earlier symbolic time and place. Such a nostalgic act was
part of a larger effort to rally hope in the Popular Unity and raise critical
consciousness.
This is a powerful example of how leftist political discourse has devel-
oped in concert with discourses of nostalgia. The renewal of existing link-
ages became a response to the ongoing vulnerabilities that marked the deeply
contentious historical context of the revolutionary 1960s and early 1970s in
Chile. What is more, this sense of regeneration, heightened by Allende’s
1970 election, further politicized the Spanish left within Spain against the
1970s backdrop of a thirty-year-old military regime and moribund dictator.
While Joan Manuel Serrat sang “Cantares” at the Teatro Monumental in
Chile in 1969, another Spanish intellectual and art critic living in Spain, José
María Moreno Galván, traveled to Chile to participate in the creation of an
international museum in support of the Popular Unity called the Museo de la
Solidaridad Salvador Allende. In March of 1971, a commission composed of
Latin American and European historians, critics and artists curated artworks
that commemorated transnational solidarity. Some of the artifacts were pro-
duced during the Spanish Civil War, praising Chile’s effort to support the
Second Republic. The museum was backed by Allende, which was a highly
symbolic act since he was the minister of health in 1939 and lobbied to aid
 Introduction 31

Spanish Republican refugees who arrived in Chile on the Winnipeg after the
war.
This nostalgic homage to transatlantic solidarity was violently shut down
after the September 11, 1973 coup. Many of the artworks were hidden, but
some reemerged in expositions in Barcelona and Madrid after Franco’s 1975
death in an attempt to denounce the Pinochet regime and stand with the
Chilean community in exile, as well as those experiencing internal exile in
Chile. 9 With the return of democracy, the museum was reestablished in
Santiago and continues to be an inspirational site of multigenerational reflec-
tion and political dialogue. These brief evocations of exchanges spanning the
1930s to the 1970s point to a longer history of transatlantic solidarities and
serve to contextualize post-dictatorial nostalgia. An interpretation of these
earlier periods highlights the plurality of nostalgia’s sources and manifesta-
tions and sets the groundwork for a new, less reductive, conceptual frame-
work to analyze contemporary memory and nostalgia.

TRANSNATIONAL REDRESS AND THE MEMORY BOOM

My discussion so far has emphasized the need to understand the specificity

of nostalgic representation and its multiple individual and collective func-
tions and forms. It has established a foundation for the case studies that
examine the intersectional nature of identities and their depiction in nostalgic
fictional narratives and documentary films today. It has also reiterated the
potential of an interdisciplinary approach to doing memory studies. To fur-
ther contextualize contemporary nostalgia, we must turn to the historical
factors and sources that have contributed to the rise of nostalgia, and the
memory boom more broadly, at the end of the twentieth century. As we have
seen, nostalgic accounts have appeared in the context of exile and political
repression as a tool to mitigate the pain of loss and to mobilize the opposi-
tion. Equally significant, and central to this book, is the emergence of nostal-
gia in novels and films decades after the transition to democracy.
In tracing the proliferation of nostalgic cultural production that surfaced
at the turn of the millennium, the transatlantic development of the 1998
Pinochet case stands out as a mobilizing factor. It is not that memory projects
suddenly “broke the silence” since The Spanish Civil War and the Pinochet
regime had already generated an extensive bibliography by the time of for-
mer dictator’s arrest. Instead, I am suggesting that contesting the regimes’
nationalist narratives and commemorating the victims in both Spain and
Chile after 1998 gained paramount importance in a new kind of literature and
cinema of memory marked by a reinvigorated emphasis on accountability. Jo
Labanyi contends that “it was only in the late 1990s that historical studies,
novels, and documentary and feature films started to focus overwhelmingly
32 Introduction

on the wartime and postwar Francoist repression (2008: 124). The transatlan-
tic workings of the Pinochet case, involving political demands and condem-
nations tied to a discourse of transitional justice and a rejection of impunity,
dovetailed not coincidentally with what Alexander Wilde has called a partic-
ularly salient “irruption of memory” (Wilde 1999, 475).
Among the Pinochet case’s competing actors were Spanish judge Baltazar
Garzón, the Valencian attorney Joan Garcés (one of Allende’s former advis-
ors) and José María Aznar (1996–2004), the conservative Prime Minister and
former fascist youth. Aznar would either sympathize with Pinochet (a vocal
admirer of Franco) and in doing so ally himself with the ex-dictator’s
wealthy Chilean business brotherhood (the bedfellows of Spanish entrepren-
eurs). Or, he would endorse Judge Garzón’s petition for Pinochet’s extradi-
tion to Spain, an appeal with strong Spanish advocacy particularly among the
Socialist Party (PSOE) and other groups on the left. Like his two neoliberal
allies, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. President
George W. Bush, the leader of the conservative Popular Party discouraged
the former dictator’s extradition to Spain and trial. Despite Aznar’s disap-
proval, Pinochet was indicted on October 1998 and placed on house arrest for
a year and a half before being released for return to Chile in 2000. While he
was charged in Chile by Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia, he died before any
conviction in 2006. Over the following decade, Garzón would turn his atten-
tion to Spain, investigating Franco-era crimes until conservative leaders sus-
pended him from judicial activity in 2011 amid heated debates surrounding
the limitations of Spain’s Amnesty Law.
The impact of Pinochet’s arrest on the evolution of memory activism and
nostalgic cultural production in Spain is hard to overstate. We should recall
that the Navarrese sociologist Emilio Silva, the co-founder of the Association
for the Recuperation of Historical Memory, sought to draw attention to the
30,000 corpses that remained in mass graves throughout Spain. In his article
“Mi abuelo también fue un desaparecido” (“My Grandfather Was Also Dis-
appeared,” 2000), Silva alluded to the case of Chile to address Spain’s unset-
tled past. Silva’s call to dig up the past began in 2000 when the ARMH
started the first non-clandestine excavations of mass graves containing the
bodies of victims of the Francoist repression during and after the war. In
placing the Spanish case alongside the Chilean one, the ARMH, like this
book, puts forth what Marianne Hirsch and Nancy K. Miller describe as a
“connective rather than comparative approach that places claims, responses
and strategies of redress emerging from different contexts in conversation
with each other” (Hirsch and Miller 2011, 8).
 Introduction 33

THE PINK TIDE AND THE RISE OF NOSTALGIA

Nostalgia surged in the early 2000s and arose in concert with the Pinochet
case and the burgeoning human rights movements working towards redress.
This surge coincided with what has been defined as the “Pink Tide” or “la
marea rosa.” The term refers to a region-wide wave of pro-leftist democratic
governments that sought to overturn neoliberal policies and to reduce the
power of the economic elites, the military, and the Catholic Church. By the
mid-2000s, Chileans rallied to elect socialist Michelle Bachelet, who went on
to serve two non-consecutive terms (2006–2010 and 2014–2018). Not only
was she the first woman to occupy the position, but her father, Alberto
Bachelet Martínez, was one of the victims of the Pinochet regime. As a
constitutionalist Air Force General, the military rebels detained and tortured
him for treason, causing his sudden death in prison in 1974. Michelle Bache-
let’s administration played a pivotal role in the construction of the Museum
of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, which opened in 2009 to histori-
cize the coup and commemorate the victims of political persecution. The
Bachelet administration also sought to address gender and class inequality by
expanding social welfare programs and supporting some feminist objectives.
As Gwynn Thomas maintains, Chile’s center-left governments have a mixed
record in promoting gender equality and LGBTQ rights, but they made
“gradual progress, particularly in terms of legal reforms around violence
against women and in improving women’s socioeconomic position” (2019,
116).
While the Pink Tide is usually associated with a turn to the left in Latin
America, it is significant that during the same period in Spain in the wake of
the Pinochet case, the left rallied to overturn rightwing economic policies and
transform socially conservative norms. With the Spanish Socialist Workers
Party (PSOE), José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero defeated the Popular Party and
served two terms from 2004–2011. His government passed significant social
reforms, including the legalization of same-sex marriage, the expansion of
reproductive rights, and the increase in the minimum wage. Similar to the
case of Bachelet in Chile, Zapatero’s family suffered direct consequences of
the military uprising and subsequent regime. In 2007, his administration
passed the Law of Historical Memory despite intense opposition from the
right. The law condemned the Franco dictatorship, gave recognition to the
regime’s victims, authorized the removal of Francoist symbols from public
buildings, and sanctioned state funding of the identification and exhumation
of victims of Francoist repression. With the return of the conservative Popu-
lar Party in 2011, some of the law’s vital measures involving state funding of
exhumations were blocked; however, Zapatero’s government gained impor-
tant ground by removing statues celebrating Francoism and by contributing
to the advancement of historical research and alternative narratives. A mutual
34 Introduction

exchange of inspiration and influence among activists, politicians, historians,

authors, filmmakers, viewers, and readers in both Spain and Chile shaped
this turning point.

DISENCHANTMENT AS A SOURCE OF NOSTALGIA

In times of crisis, nostalgia can facilitate a sense of continuity of collective

identity and provide a source of inspiration for activism and social change.
By establishing a link between a self in the present and an image of a self or a
desired community in the past, nostalgic memory plays a role in the shaping
of a feeling of belonging. Nostalgic memories idealize a more enchanting
world of yesterday as a model for creative renewal within the disheartening
world of the here-and-now. In searching for the sources of the twenty-first-
century nostalgia wave in Chile and Spain, the arrest of Pinchet in 1998
stands out as a galvanizing moment that contributed to the rise of memory
culture. With that said, there is another significant social phenomena that has
predated that landmark. That social phenomenon has been characterized as
“el desencanto,” or a period of disenchantment.
In Politics and the Art of Commemoration: Memorials to Struggle in
Latin America and Spain, Katherine Hite asks, “Why has the question of
memory, and in particular memories of struggle, war, conflict, and violence,
exploded with such force today?” (Hite 2012, 1). Her answer pivots on the
tensions between disillusionment and nostalgic desire: “It is certainly in part
because memory is constitutive of who we are and how we interpret the here
and now, and for many, the here and now is deplorable. . . . In our search for
explanations of what, exactly, went wrong, and how we became so un-
moored, so powerless, we become melancholic, nostalgic, and reflective”
(Hite 2012, 1–2). Hite’s reflection allows us to circle back to the opening of
this introduction, which links disenchantment, nostalgia, and political mobil-
ization.
The term “el desencanto” has been used to describe the wide-spread feel-
ing of disappointment toward the democratic systems that followed the col-
lapse of the Pinochet and Franco dictatorships. In the case of Spain, the
sentiment became pervasive during the 1980s and 1990s. Jo Labanyi ex-
plains, “The left’s desencanto was rooted in an awareness of the discrepancy
between the enormous energy invested over the long years of the anti-Franco
struggle and the minimal concessions to leveling social and economic reform
gained as a result of the transition” (Graham and Labanyi 1995, 313). The
chasm between the hope for meaningful change and the angst over the conti-
nuity of class and gendered hierarchies worsened with the ongoing splinter-
ing of leftist alliances. While rightwing nostalgia in Spain gave rise to the
statement “Con Franco vivíamos mejor” (“We were better off with Franco”),
 Introduction 35

an ironic leftist nostalgia inspired the response, “Contra Franco vivíamos

mejor” (“We were better off against Franco”). Irony and nostalgia come
together in this final phrase that captures post-Franco disillusionment.
Likewise, many Chileans who had sacrificed for the anti-Pinochet resis-
tance, experienced yet another defeat in the mid-1990s as the social and
economic reforms of the transition failed to come close to their collective
goals. For feminists and LGBTQ groups that saw the centrality of patriarchal
ideology to the dictatorship, the critique of the politics of consensus in 1990s
Chile also had gendered dimensions (Thomas 2019, 122). Center-left govern-
ments dismissed calls to upend heteropatriarchal policies involving the sup-
pression of reproductive rights, marriage equality, and transgender identity
recognition. As Gwynn Thomas, citing Liesl Haas, points out “Many female
activists experienced the reluctance of the Concertación to respond to femi-
nist demands as a betrayal of the ideals of democratization and the immense
work done by the women’s movements in both delegitimizing the military
government and in bringing back democracy” (Thomas 2019, 124).
The wavering between disenchantment, hesitant desire, and nostalgia was
experienced in Spain against a 1990s post-dictatorial backdrop in which trials
for Francoist perpetrators of state repression seemed out of reach. After
Franco’s death, official confrontations with the past were silenced by the
political amnesty of 1977 that protected those guilty of crimes sanctioned by
the dictatorship. As Paul Preston reminds us, in that period, thirty years
before the passing of the Law of Historical Memory, there would be no
public funding of “commemorations, excavations, and research connected to
the war” (Preston 2006, 12). That was not the case in Chile where lawyers,
politicians, and human rights activists put forth a public campaign at the
close of the dictatorship to confront the human rights violations of the Pino-
chet regime. The Rettig Report, released in 1991 during the presidency of
President Patricio Aylwin (1990–1994) included human rights abuses result-
ing in death or disappearance. The Valech Report, published in 2004 during
the administration of Ricardo Lagos (2000–2006), cataloged the techniques
of imprisonment and interrogation. The creation of the official torture report
represented a critical measure, but it is also true that most of the human rights
violators benefited from impunity.
In the following decade, “el desencanto” among the Pinochet regime’s
critics was exacerbated with the death of the dictator in 2006 after his release
from house arrest. That disillusionment, however, did not lead to complete
political apathy among the left. It was precisely that year, 2006, that Chileans
elected Michelle Bachelet on a platform of change and later re-elected her in
2014. Many have lauded her public investment in a culture of memory
through the establishment of the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, as
well as her prioritization of gender equality and the reduction of poverty.
36 Introduction

Others, as in the case of Zapatero’s Spain, have found the reach of Bachelet’s
administration extremely limited.
The cultural ethos identified with leftist disenchantment and nostalgia at
the end of the millennium in Chile and Spain must also be viewed within a
global framework. In Twilight Memories, written in the mid-1990s, Andreas
Huyssen associates the crisis of utopian thought with a chain of defeats
including the shortcomings of socialist alternatives (Soviet Union, China,
Cuba) and their inefficacy to deal with the rise of structural inequalities
(Huyssen 1995, 87). At the same time, Huyssen emphasizes the persistence
of the utopian longings that socialism had spurred into being. In retrospect,
Huyssen’s statements seem to anticipate the rise of the left in the early 2000s.
In 1995 he observed, “disillusionment and utopia are far from being mutually
exclusive, and rather than assuming the end of utopia lock, stock, and barrel,
it might make more sense to ask whether perhaps the utopian imagination has
been transformed in recent decades” (Huyssen 1995, 86). For Chilean philos-
opher Martín Hopenhayn, a “loss of belief in large-scale projects, collective
stories, and societal utopias” arises together with “an urgency to counter the
new waves of political pragmatism and individual cynicism, by way of illu-
sions and proposals infused with new content, perhaps with greater humility
and fewer pretensions than the previous utopias, but not ineffective for this”
(Hopenhayn 2001, ix). Hopenhayen, similar to the authors and filmmakers
that I study in this book, advocates resistance to neoliberal capitalism that
perpetuates the injustice of power hierarchies and urges the exploration of
discourses of difference and symbolic action that is neither apocalyptic nor
integrated in the neoliberal now (Hopenhayn 2001, 46).

MAPPING THE NOSTALGIC TURN IN FICTION AND FILM

The reestablishment of democracy in Chile in 1990 ushered in many publica-

tions that engaged conflictive memories of the military regime but not from
an overtly nostalgic perspective. Examples of anti-nostalgic texts from the
early to mid 1990s include Ariel Dorfman’s La muerte y la doncella (1991),
Alberto Fuguet’s Mala onda (1991), Pía Barros’s Astride (1992), José Lean-
dro Urbina’s Cobro revertido (1993), Diamela Eltit’s Los vigilantes (1994),
Pedro Lemebel’s Loco afán: crónicas de sidario (1996), and Ana María del
Río’s A tango abierto (1996). In film, examples include La flaca Alejandra
(1994) by Carmen Castillo, Amnesia (1994) by Gonzalo Justiniano and Esta-
dio Nacional (2001) by Carmen Luz Parot. These works defy easy classifica-
tion; however, many critics would agree that they either communicate a
discourse at odds with nostalgia or imbue the past only subtly with the
tensions between disenchantment and nostalgia. Regarding Los vigilantes,
Francine Masiello argues “Eltit shows that there is no space for nostalgia
 Introduction 37

while discussing the merits of family, no idyllic private or public space that
respects adults and children. Instead, ruin is set on all thinking subjects; the
Latin American family as myth is destroyed. The mask is finally removed”
(2001, 137). Front and center are the dismal political, cultural, and economic
legacies of the Pinochet regime through characters who are traumatized,
displaced, and dejected, or driven and eroded by consumer culture, competi-
tion, and apathy. We are left with the dystopia of neoliberal capitalism,
whereby disillusionment often replaces solidarity and despair supersedes
hope.
The development of Chile’s memory culture after Pinochet also involves
the diaspora in the 1970s and 1980s that produced an extensive bibliography
of texts that grieved the severance of ties to communities and to the vibrant
cultural environment of the Allende years. Poets, novelists, and filmmakers
who experienced the coup like Marjorie Agosín, Roberto Bolaño, Patricio
Guzmán, Roberto Brodsky, Carlos Cerda, Germán Marín, Antonio Skarmeta,
and Ariel Dorfman are examples of Chilean exiles whose work grapples with
questions of rupture and reveal some traces of nostalgia. But perhaps the
most recognized Chilean author among international readers is Isabel Al-
lende, whose La casa de los espíritus (1982) became one of the most popular
translated novels written in Spanish. The narrative’s combination of an at-
tachment to the homeland and an idealization of a lost political milieu within
the format of a historical romance attests to the lure of simple nostalgia. For
that reason, the novel garnered negative responses from Chilean writers in
exile, as well as those who stayed in Chile enduring an internal exile and
depicting a more vexing portrait of the pre- and post-coup past.
The widespread disenchantment in Spain that spanned from the transition
through the early 1990s resonates in anti-nostalgic novels and films like Si te
dicen que caí (1973) by Juan Marsé and adapted to film by Vicente Aranda
(1989), El cuarto de atrás (1978) by Carmen Martín Gaite, and Historias del
Kronen (1995) by José Ángel Mañas and adapted to film by Montxo
Armendáriz (1995). We find parallels between these works and the anti-
nostalgic novels by Chilean authors described above. In both cases, they
contrast with works that came later in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As
Antonio López Quiñones suggests in the book La guerra persistente: Mem-
oria, violencia y utopia, the lingering “desencanto” in Spain at the turn of the
millennium eventually motivated some writers to search for utopian political
traditions in the past that offered an alternative to a model of neoliberal
capitalist democracy. To paraphrase López Quiñones, a sense nostalgia re-
sulted from dashed post-dictatorial aspirations: “Given the difficulty of de-
veloping future utopian visions, some found a symbolic space in the past and
in those moments that housed transformative potential” (2006, 201). 10
When we chart the swell of nostalgic works dedicated to the Spanish
Civil War and postwar, we find that the trend developed over time, approxi-
38 Introduction

mately sixty years after the end of the war. It was within the political climate
of the Pinochet case and widespread disenchantment that the number of
feature and documentary films, historical novels, testimonies, historiogra-
phies surged in Spain and revealed a renewed interest in the Spanish Civil
War and postwar. That spurt of nostalgic cultural production emerged within
a flood of memory works often called a “memory boom.” In other words, a
smaller “nostalgia current” or “nostalgia wave” occurred inside the larger
memory boom and involved authors and filmmakers of multiple generations,
including a prominent younger generation that did not experience the war
directly. In an attempt to listen anew to Spanish Civil War stories, many
began to excavate archives and interview victims of the Franco regime. Some
well-known examples include La lengua de la mariposas (1996 novel, 1999
film) and El lápiz del carpintero (1998 novel, 2003 film) by Manuel Rivas,
Soldados de Salamina (2001 novel, 2003 film) by Javier Cercas and La voz
dormida (2002 novel, 2011 film) by Dulce Chacón.
In Chile, the watershed events surrounding the Pinochet case also coin-
cided with a torrent of memory works visible in bookstores and theaters. As
Katherine Hite argues, “With Pinochet’s arrest, debates about the past had
moved quite perceptibly beyond the private spaces of homes and gatherings
of close friends to the public sphere and the streets (Hite 2000, xiii). Alexan-
der Wilde suggests that what began as a trickle of cultural production in 1990
turned into a heavy flow by 1998. That was also the year that marked the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the military coup. As I previously stated, for
Wilde, 1998 constituted a particularly salient “irruption of memory,” which
he characterizes as a proliferation of public events, ceremonies, publications
and trials that “remind the political class and citizens alike of the unforgotten
past” (Wilde 1999, 475). While 1998 was not the first “irruption,” it was, as
Wilde argues, astounding in its magnitude. That irruption only grew with the
2002 investigation of the Riggs Bank scandal. It was at that time that Pino-
chet’s reputation became sullied even for his most faithful followers. These
events served as a powerful catalyst for the dissemination of even more
works about the pre-coup past. Michael Lazzara states, “This change in the
former dictator’s public image was accompanied by an unprecedented resur-
gence of reflection on former socialist president Salvador Allende, whose
legacy had largely been silenced in official circles since the transition’s early
years” (Lazzara 2009, 47).
What many authors and filmmakers in the new nostalgia current share is
an attempt to derive meaning from stories of injustice, mass atrocity, and
resistance. In the case of Spain, all of the previously mentioned writers were
born after the war in the 1950s or early 1960s, and as such, they also share a
similar generational claim. In the case of Chile, a significant number of films
including Mi vida con Carlos (2010) by German Berger-Hertz and El edificio
de los Chilenos by Marcarena Aguiló, La ciudad de los fotógrafos (2006) and
 Introduction 39

Guerrero (2017) by Sebastián Moreno, and Lumi Videla (2017) by Paz Ahu-
mada were produced by filmmakers that were born around the time of the
military coup or after. As a tool to understand the memory narratives of this
cohort of authors and filmmakers in Chile and Spain, many critics have used
Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory to describe the recollections of
children who have experienced the effects of political conflict, war, and
postwar repression in relation to their parents and grandparents.
The concept of postmemory is thought-provoking and useful to analyze
memory production in Spain and Chile; however, as Unsettling Nostalgia
demonstrates, the term cannot be applied to describe the entire nostalgia
current. The concept allows us to consider how the second generation’s
longing for a time predating their birth might arise from the lingering nostal-
gia conveyed to them by their parents or other members of the Civil War
generation. The postmemory theoretical framework also allows us to consid-
er how the younger generation’s temporal remove from the worst human
rights violations might provide them either with a distance that highlights
and sharpens complexity or conversely that gives them a hazy retrospective
lens that blurs or mutes contradictions. These tendencies are not always
mutually exclusive, nor do they inevitably apply to all writers and filmmak-
ers with similar generational claims. As the chapters illustrate, late twentieth-
century unsettling nostalgia crosses generational boundaries, thereby chal-
lenging prescriptive generational logic. While the generational issue is im-
portant to recognize, I agree with Fredric Jameson who insists that genera-
tional logic is a classificatory system that often seeks a totality that does not
entirely reflect the heterogeneity of experience (Jameson 2003, 229).

TRAUMA, HAUNTING, AND THE NOSTALGIA CRITIQUE

Spanish and Chilean cultural production in the late 1990s effectively took a
nostalgic turn as authors and filmmakers of multiple generations increasingly
began to transform otherwise traumatic stories of political persecution into
inspiring narratives of solidarity and resistance. That turn, and the general
shift to the emotional response to the past, has been viewed with skepticism
by many critics. In Spain, Ángel Loureiro distinguishes between the docu-
mentaries about the Spanish Civil War from the mid-1970s and those of the
early twenty-first century, critiquing the latter. “While older documentaries
broach the war in political terms, and present personal hardships as a price
paid to realize collective goals, the more recent documentaries rest primarily
on a pathetic or sentimental rhetoric of unmediated affects” (Loureiro 2008,
233). The directors of recent films, according to Loureiro, “are content to
remain on the surface of things, engaging in facile presentation of suffering”
(Loureiro 2008, 233). Other cultural critics have articulated similar conten-
40 Introduction

tions about the tendency to simplify and romanticize the Second Republic in
Spanish literature and cinema. These include Antonio Gómez López
Quiñones in La guerra persistente (2006), Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas in
“Screening the Past: History and Nostalgia in Contemporary Spanish Cine-
ma” (2000), and Vicente Sánchez-Biosca in Cine y Guerra Civil española:
del mito a la memoria (2006), among others.
Likewise, in Chile, oversimplified portraits of the Popular Unity in film,
television, and literature have prompted many to question how cultural pro-
duction might move beyond reductive forms of diversion. Michael Lazzara
notes a problematic shift in 2003 during the thirtieth anniversary of the
military coup when emblematic images of the coup were recycled “such that
they were emptied of their impact and divested (to some degree) of the
weight and density of the traumas to which they alluded” (Lazzara 2009,
47–48). If we place these critiques in conversation with Loureiro, as well as
Argentine critic Beatriz Sarlo, we find some remarkable similarities as they
all worry that memorial reconstructions often fail to attend to the political
complexity underpinning social revolutions (Sarlo 2004, 49). What is essen-
tial in the nostalgia critique is the understanding of the danger of creating
mythologies that diminish the complexities of history and generate silences
upon other silences while giving the impression that consumers are recuper-
ating the past. Such arguments urge us to question how decontextualized
depictions mitigate the disillusionment of the present by turning the horrify-
ing past into a form of entertainment. Returning to Huyssen, this time in
“Nostalgia for Ruins”: “it is difficult to walk the line between sentimental
lament over a loss and the critical reclaiming of a past for the purposes of
constructing alternative futures” (Huyssen 2006, 9).
In “Memory and Modernity in Democratic Spain: The Difficulty of Com-
ing to Terms with the Spanish Civil War” (2007), Jo Labanyi argues for an
aesthetics of haunting as a way of dealing with a traumatic past. Labanyi
describes the representation of ghosts in post-Franco cinema as an illuminat-
ing way to acknowledge the traces of those political dissidents who were
forbidden to leave a trace. The image of the ghost becomes a symbol of those
victims who demand reparation. Furthermore, she insists that “the trope of
haunting can be seen as a recognition of the fact that no narrative of atrocities
can do justice to the pain of those who experienced such atrocities firsthand”
(2007, 111). For Labanyi, this is a “more ethical position than the assump-
tion, in those texts that opt for documentary realism, that it is possible to re-
create for the reader or spectator a direct experience of the wartime and
postwar repression as they were lived at the time” (2007, 111). She differen-
tiates between novels and films that call attention to the complexity of mem-
ory by deviating from established modes of storytelling and those “realist”
style works that convey the idea that “the past can be unproblematically
recovered” (2007, 106). Labanyi’s ideas about haunting memory challenge
 Introduction 41

the assumption that all post-Franco memory works function in the same way.
She contends that films like The Spirit of the Beehive and The Devil’s Back-
bone, which draw on the horror genre, are “more successful in dealing with a
traumatic past than those films and novels, and testimonies that adopt a
realist or documentary mode, precisely because they acknowledge the hor-
ror—that is the ‘unspeakable’” (2007, 107). The conceptualization of the
haunting trope has shaped how many cultural critics interpret and categorize
ways of remembering dictatorial trauma, and it has offered an entryway to
make further distinctions.

MODES OF MEMORY AND NOSTALGIA

To differentiate between memory works, I have identified various modes of

transmission, which include the anti-nostalgic mode (i.e., El espiritu de la
colmena, Los vigilantes), the unsettling nostalgic mode (El corazón helado,
Estrella distante), and the reductive or restorative nostalgic mode (La voz
dormida, La casa de los espiritus). The first category, which is not the focus
of this book, could be broken down into subcategories including un-nostalgic
testimonial or fictional realism and, conversely, what Labanyi calls “indirect
representation of the past through its aftereffects” (i.e., the haunting trope)
(Labanyi 2007, 108). To extend Labanyi’s claims, haunting memory is unset-
tling by nature, whereas different forms of anti-nostalgic realism may or may
not disquiet readers and viewers. This anti-nostalgic mode may also apply to
perpetrator confessions, which Leigh Payne analyzes in Unsettling Accounts
(2007). Payne’s title has a double meaning and in part served as an inspira-
tion for the title of this book. She problematizes notions of reconciliation in
post-dictatorial societies, including Chile, through close readings of confes-
sions, and their framing in media outlets.
The second mode, which constitutes the cornerstone of this book, in-
volves “unsettling nostalgia,” and it differs from the anti-nostalgic mode in
its fusion of idealization and critical reflection. Adding to what I have al-
ready explained in this introduction, unsettling nostalgia is a term that de-
scribes an unwillingness to accept or simply “settle” the past. But unlike the
aforementioned anti-nostalgic mode, unsettling nostalgia also describes an
elegiac way of evoking memories of unrealized collective dreams. It is not
always ironic or mischievous like Boym’s “reflective nostalgia,” but it is
always imbued with thought-provoking, and even haunting, tensions that are
generative as they move readers and viewers to see the past and its legacies
anew. The novel El lápiz del carpintero (1998) by Manuel Rivas is once
again a useful example, this time to demonstrate how literature merges the
haunting trope with nostalgia. The ghostly figure of the painter at the center
of the narrative symbolizes the haunting presence of the murdered Republic.
42 Introduction

The phantom constitutes a literary manifestation of unsettling nostalgia, one

that summons the lost creative potential of that period and subverts the vio-
lent patriarchal structures of the military victors (DiGiovanni 2017, 26). Nov-
els like Rivas’s create their own paradigm. They allow us to understand a
different kind of nostalgia, unsettling nostalgia, as a form of memory evoked
by a sense of loss and capable of provoking a critical engagement with the
past while raising collective consciousness about the past’s significance in
the present. Such unsettling nostalgic narratives constitute creative responses
to the delegitimization of oppositional voices by offering histories of quests
for social connection, critical consciousness, and redress.
The “unsettling” in unsettling nostalgia connotes disruption and, in many
cases involving post-dictatorial Spain and Chile, a confrontation with not
only the atrocities of the Right but also the sexist betrayals and homophobic
contempt of the Left. The concept thus relates to what Carl Fischer calls
“elegies to utopias” in Queering the Chilean Way: Cultures of Exceptional-
ism and Sexual Dissidence, 1965–2015 (2016). Fischer’s book explores how
authors and filmmakers retrospectively invoke the Popular Unity period as a
time charged with energy and creative potential, but also a time still steeped
in a heteronormative patriarchal culture that excluded and patronized sexual
others. Whereas Queering the Chilean Way focuses on Chile, Unsettling
Nostalgia records the transatlantic character of nostalgia and the multiple
ways that it shapes depictions of Spain’s and Chile’s utopian aspirations but
also contests their shortcomings. Here, particular attention is paid to how
unsettling nostalgia takes to task the maintenance of entrenched societal
norms that prescribed monolithic motherhood and heterosexuality.
The third mode involves reductive or restorative nostalgia. Building on
my earlier discussion, these two words are used interchangeably in this book
even though they seem oppositional in nature. Restoration typically denotes
generative power while reduction signifies the contrary. But, in the mis-
guided attempt to restore memory intact, elisions or missing pieces go unac-
knowledged. The deadening of complexity is inevitable. By using the term
reductive in addition to restorative, I emphasize this process. Reductive nos-
talgia, as a form of transmission, characterizes films and novels that purport
to engage deeply with the past, but ultimately disseminate an account that is
at best lacking nuance, and, at worst depthless and schematic.
While most critics have used the term “restorative nostalgia” to exclu-
sively analyze right-wing regimes and their reactionary rhetoric, this book
traces how the restorative mode can also characterize discourses of the left
that mystify and romanticize. For example, Las trece rosas (2007) directed
by Emilio Martínez Lázaro is a mostly depoliticized Hollywood-style portrait
of the thirteen young women executed by the Francoist firing squad at the
end of the Spanish Civil War. In Lázaro’s film, plots of romance and betrayal
eclipse the story of women’s involvement in the Unified Socialist Youth
 Introduction 43

(JSU). What could have been a cutting exploration of a gendered state crime
instead becomes a love story with blunted ideological and historical edges.
This example illustrates how the reconstruction of repressed figures can iron-
ically create a distancing effect that renders revolutionary struggles as kits-
chy relics of an irrevocably lost past.

CENTRAL THEMES: RETURN, EDUCATION, AND RESISTANCE

In charting the new nostalgia current, I have traced three recurrent themes
that allow authors and filmmakers to join sharp historical inquiry with an
inspired nostalgic vision. The quest for transgenerational communication is
one of these defining themes. In Spain, the search for Republican roots is a
common narrative strategy that sets the new nostalgia current apart from the
earlier forms that emerged among a generation of Republican exiles from the
1940s through the 1970s as a response to defeat. The return home to repair
broken bonds and to establish new ones also distinguishes the new nostalgia
current in Chile from the earlier exile nostalgic narratives of the 1970s and
1980s. Contemporary authors and filmmakers imbue stories of homecoming
after forced displacement with a desire for reconnection and the recuperation
of places, as well as a cultural milieu suffocated under the pressure of the
regime. Here we can apply Hirsch and Miller’s insights in Rites of Return
(2011) to the contexts of Chile and Spain alike to contend that the legacies of
state violence have engendered a set of practices that involve “the reconstruc-
tion of past histories, the retrieval of lost communities, the activation of
historic sites, and the quest for origins” (2011, xi). But, as all of the authors
and filmmakers in this book reveal, a return home is not synonymous with
recovery or consolation. The sorrow of loss remains; however, they also
suggest that the encounter with the past through letters, photographs, archival
footage, objects, sites, and dialogues, may become an empowering act. One
of the examples that I include involves Carmen Castillo, a former militant of
the Revolutionary Left who resisted the regime clandestinely then fled into
exile under threat. In Calle Santa Fe, she returns to Chile to re-establish
relationships and reclaim the house on Santa Fe Street where Miguel Enri-
quez, her partner and leader of the MIR, was gunned down. As she shows us
in her unsuccessful attempt to reclaim the house, in the end, forging bonds
through memory is equally if not more important than the reclamation of the
physical building. In this way, return becomes a form of “activist remem-
brance” (Hirsch and Miller 2011, 17).
The second theme that characterizes the recent swell of nostalgic cultural
production in Spain and Chile involves the centrality of education. Although
gender, racial, and class equality were never fully achieved during the Sec-
ond Republic or the Popular Unity, education became a crucial site in the
44 Introduction

process of creating a more just and egalitarian society through critical con-
sciousness. It is consequently unsurprising that the current nostalgic imagina-
tion often includes memories of intellectual development and its empowering
effects. Such representations not only respond to the assault on education
perpetrated by the Franco and Pinochet regimes, but also to the current state
of inequitable education in the post-dictatorial aftermath. In the narratives of
Almudena Grandes and Roberto Brodsky, characters embrace a view of
learning as transformative and collective, occurring through dialogue. They
depict education during the Second Republic and the Allende years not as
indoctrination, but as a process in which students and educators question
alongside one another and gain the critical-thinking tools to grapple with the
injustices that hierarchies of power produce. Roberto Bolaño also celebrates
the stimulating intellectual environment of the pre-coup Allende years and
contrasts it with the un-inspirational present. In Dulce Chacón’s reconstruc-
tion of the Ventas women’s prison in 1940s Madrid, characters secretly
convert the site into makeshift school and, by extension, transform women’s
experiences of political repression into moments of growth and bonding.
Given its emphasis on education and the importance of community, un-
settling nostalgic fiction and film share common threads with feminist uto-
pian writing. In “Feminism and Utopia,” Alessa Johns contends that “utopias
are visions that help to organize and structure present experience and dis-
satisfaction towards a desireable, workable purpose in the future” (192).
Johns outlines the features of feminist utopian writing, including the signifi-
cance of education, the social construction of identity, the shared approach to
power, and a respect for the natural world. While nostalgic desire focuses on
the past and utopian thought concentrates on the future, they both hold a
vision of collective moral integrity and unity. Just as there is no single kind
of nostalgia, there is not one kind of utopian thought. For that reason, the
feminist utopian model is particularly relevant when viewed alongside the
unsettling nostalgic mode. Both facilitate “the imaginative speculation neces-
sary for generating new liberating strategies” (Johns 176).
The theme of clandestine resistance is the third central theme that I have
traced in the contemporary nostalgia current. Writers and filmmakers of
multiple generations cast a sheen of nostalgia over the pre-coup pasts as well
as the years of opposition to dictatorial rule. One remarkable case in point
involves the figure of the maquis, or more generally, the rural and urban
guerrilla bands of anti-fascist fighters that resisted Franco’s forces. As Ra-
chel Linville correctly argues in her detailed study of decades of depictions
of the maquis, Francoist literature and film in the 1940s and 1950s tried to
justify both the need for the military coup and the subsequent regime through
negative portrayals of the maquis as criminals (Linville 2014). In early post-
dictatorial fiction and film of the late 1970s and 1980s, there was a shift away
from the dehumanizing Francoist narrative. Examples include El corazón del
 Introduction 45

bosque (1978) by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, Luna de lobos by Julio Llama-

zaras (1985), and Beltenebros (1989) by Antonio Muñoz Molina. These post-
dictatorial works critically respond to the Francoist narrative by representing
the intolerable conditions that the guerrilla endured to avoid postwar reprisals
perpetrated by the civil guard; however, authors and filmmakers render the
guerrilla without any nostalgic vindication of their resistance. During the
decade that followed, the image of the maquis became a symbol of heroic
struggle. That shift also had gendered dimensions. Whereas previously men
had appeared as the quintessential resistance fighter, we observe that in the
late 1990s writers and filmmakers increasingly worked with survivors and
historians to bring unmapped stories of women’s militancy from the margins
to the center.
Examples of novels and films that focus on the guerrilla in postwar Spain
and thereby evince this sway of the cultural imagination include Silencio roto
(2000) by Montxo Armendariz based on the novel Maquis (1997) by Alfons
Cervera, La voz dormida (2002b) by Dulce Chacón, La guerrilla de la mem-
oria (2002) by Javier Corcuera, El laberinto del fauno (2006) by Guillermo
del Toro, and Inés y la alegría (2010) and El lector de Julio Verne (2012) by
Almudena Grandes. By using some of these as examples, Linville argues that
the evolution of the representation of guerrilla fighters indicates the ever-
changing political discourse in Spain. The argument that I would like to
make is that the reframing of the figure of the maquis is part of a larger
fusion of three historical periods (the pre-war, war, and postwar) into one
inspirational time of anti-fascist resistance. The violence of the Franco re-
gime is not simply glossed over, but rather it is framed within a nostalgic
representation of solidarity, compassion, and courage.
We can identify a similar shift of the cultural imagination in recent Chi-
lean novels and films as they bring together memories of the Popular Unity
with stories of the underground opposition movements during the dictator-
ship. Beyond Roberto Brodsky, Carmen Castillo, and Roberto Bolaño, whose
works I analyze in this book, we could include in this framework the films
Actores secundarios (2004) by Pachi Bustos and Jorge Leiva, Héroes
frágiles (2006) by Emilio Pacull, Mi vida con Carlos (2010) by German
Berger-Hertz, El edificio de los Chilenos (2010) by Marcarena Aguiló, Mi-
chelle (2011) by Rodrigo Díaz, La ciudad de los fotógrafos (2006) and
Guerrero (2017) by Sebastián Moreno, Lumi Videla (2017) by Paz Ahuma-
da, and Nostalgia de la luz (2010) by Patricio Guzmán. In the field of litera-
ture, a number of authors have cast their gaze on the anti-Pinochet resistance,
but Pedro Lemebel stands out for his subtly nostalgic narrative Tengo miedo
torero (2001). Set in Santiago in 1986, the novel blends fact and fiction to
recount the characters and events surrounding Pinochet's attempted assassi-
nation by the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR). Lemebel reflects on
how community is forged in adversity through the rendering of a poignant
46 Introduction

relationship between a clandestine Marxist-Leninist revolutionary and a

transgender woman in Chile in the mid-1980s. While state repression and
militarized masculinity torment the characters in the novel, these challenges
foster mutual support and bonding.
To understand this change in the cultural imagination, I both draw from
and complicate Sara Horowitz’s argument in “Nostalgia and the Holocaust”
(2010). She contends that “In the memory narratives of survivors and refu-
gees of the Nazi genocide, the prewar past figures nostalgically” (Horowitz
2010, 49). Her study teases out a set of contradictions that characterize recent
memory works in relation to older ones. “Conventionally, nostalgic remem-
brances gesture toward representations of a golden era (home), followed by
catastrophe (separation from or destruction of that home)” (Horowitz 2010,
56). That pattern, Horowitz observes, has shifted in recent texts penned by a
younger generation of writers who “collapse home and its destruction into
one temporal object of nostalgia, redolent with a sense of loss and incomplete
mourning” (Horowitz 2010, 56). We can apply Horowitz’s claims to a range
of works in Spain and Chile; however, as I previously explained, the multi-
generational makeup of the authors and filmmakers in this book defy genera-
tional logic, and by extension, neat integration into the interpretation of post-
war nostalgia as exclusively linked to postmemory. If the figure of the disap-
peared resistance fighter motivates a younger generation to unravel histories
that predate their births, then that figure compels an older generation to
communicate the knowledge and the emotion that they derive from having
witnessed the conditions against which such figures fought. Unsettling Nos-
talgia will trace the similarities and differences between the nostalgic memo-
ries of witnesses, participants, bystanders, victims, and their descendants
who connect with their predecessors’ experiences.

THE CHAPTERS

Interpretations of particular novels and films aim to illuminate the framework

that I have presented in the introduction. Instead of reading each literary and
cinematic work to fit the theories, I demonstrate how the theories have devel-
oped from the texts. I examine similarities and differences between novels
and documentaries produced in Spain and Chile from 1996–2012 that pro-
blematize reductive views of nostalgia. The examples that I provide allow
readers to plot various points on what we can consider a nostalgia spectrum.
The seven novels and films analyzed here have been selected to illustrate
characteristics related to the concept of unsettling nostalgia, but each one
reveals its particular instances.
In “Unsettling Nostalgia in Roberto Brodsky’s Últimos días de la histor-
ia,” I open with an examination of how cultural critics, authors and activists
 Introduction 47

in Chile have contrasted the revolutionary spirit that characterized the Al-
lende years (1970–1973) with the disillusionment of the late 1990s—a period
that followed the successful “No” campaign in 1988 but failed to usher in
significant structural change. I suggest that the problems facing many leftist
groups involving the persistence of impunity, as well as the social despair
produced by the neoliberal economic and political model, are manifest in
Brodsky’s 2001 novel Últimos días de la historia [Last Days of History]. The
author, whose experience of exile in Spain is relevant to this book, invites a
consideration of the personal and collective dimensions of nostalgia and its
connection to trauma, displacement, return, and alienation. Narrated in the
form of a first-person confession, the novel tells the story of Lalo, a middle-
aged Archeology professor by day and a masked performer in a nightclub by
night. Against the backdrop of the transition to democracy in the 1990s, the
protagonist stages a show combining camp-style elements of theatricality
with an abstract performance of memory that juxtaposes euphoric memories
of the pre-coup years with dystopic memories of the 1973 overthrow.
Through a close reading of Lalo’s performance and chronicle, which allude
to the work of Pedro Lemebel, I argue that self-conscious acts of remem-
brance at once provide survivors a way of working through trauma and
present readers with an account that ventures beyond the Manichean narra-
tives of “official histories” (heroism, winners, losers). Brodsky’s “unsettling
nostalgia” strikes a provocative balance between dark social pessimism and
the forward-looking belief that radical forms of commemoration might en-
gender further debate about the dangers of forgetting the systematic repres-
sion of the Pinochet regime. Memory narratives like Brodsky’s also leave
readers with a powerful critique of the tacit consent of many Chileans to
accept the patriarchal and neoliberal political-economic model that the re-
gime implemented and ruthlessly upheld.
In “Memories of Motherhood and Militancy in Calle Santa Fe by Carmen
Castillo,” I examine how Chilean women of the radical left remember and
narrate their stories of resistance in the wake of the Pinochet regime. I deal
specifically with the autobiographical documentary Calle Santa Fe (2007)
[Santa Fe Street]by Carmen Castillo and ask how the film represents the
lingering recollections of Castillo’s own participation as a proponent of revo-
lutionary social transformation, as well as her traumatic memories of politi-
cal persecution and exile in France. The film is a hybrid documentary con-
structed from archival footage, creative reenactments and interviews that
take viewers back to the time of Castillo’s forced displacement in Europe to
her emotional return to Chile where she exchanges recollections with survi-
vors, family members, and former revolutionaries. Although the film features
the testimonies of both men and women, this chapter focuses on women’s
voices so as to open up a dialogue not only about the extent to which organ-
izations of the radical left like the MIR (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolu-
48 Introduction

cionaria) struggled to move past the gendered structures of a patriarchal

society, but also about the clash between the temporalities and affective
structures of militancy and post-dictatorial memories. Whereas Castillo-the-
militant prioritized political convictions over maternity, the memorialist-di-
rector questions those priorities in the present, thus ostensibly re-asserting
the gendered role of motherhood that militancy seemed to challenge. In my
view, however, this temporal disjuncture does not signal a mere retreat to the
patriarchal model, but rather is an attempt to engender a political genealogy
that might at once contribute to the process of mourning and animate history
for future collective goals. Calle Santa Fe finds its strength not through two-
dimensional idealizations of resistance fighters, but rather through a nuanced
rendering of the emotional landscapes of mothers and daughters whose sto-
ries bring out the complexities of historical processes while calling into ques-
tion the gendered assumptions that shape them.
In “Unsettling the Archive: De monstruos y faldas,” I examine how the
Barcelona-based Chilean filmmaker Carolina Astudillo uses the experimen-
tal documentary form to explore the challenges that anti-fascist women in
postwar Spain faced, but also to celebrate the audacity with which such
challenges were met. Born in 1975, Astudillo spent her childhood under the
Pinochet regime. As a young adult, she moved to Catalonia to study non-
fiction film and began her career with the twenty-four-minute piece De mon-
struos y faldas (Of Monsters and Skirts, 2008) for the Master’s program in
creative documentary at the Universitat Antónoma de Barcelona. I argue that
Astudillo’s re-contextualization of found footage and archival photographs
of the Les Corts Women’s Prison in postwar Barcelona renders visible how
the hierarchical militarized state in Spain stemmed from a patriarchal society
conditioned by unequal power relations that were reinforced in media outlets.
At the same time, De monstruos y faldas nostalgically portrays multiple
forms of women’s resistance that have emerged as a response to militaristic
patriarchal ideology. Astudillo’s search in film archives is not for revolution-
ary icons of yesteryear, but for acts of critical consciousness and defiance
against the many restrictions that shaped women’s lives within the confines
of Francoist military vigilance. The inclusion of Astudillo’s documentary in
this book also springs from an understanding of the significance of both her
transatlantic trajectory and critical lens that focuses on the past and present in
Spain and Chile alike. Her cutting-edge engagement with the histories of the
Pinochet and Franco regimes profoundly resonates with the larger claims in
Unsettling Nostalgia, which underscore the political, historical, cultural, and
artistic connections between these two contexts. Although Astudillo’s films
deal with each context separately, they share key thematic threads that reveal
her knowledge of the relationships between movements in 1930s Spain and
early 1970s Chile to end institutionalized inequality.
 Introduction 49

In “Postwar Prison Nostalgia,” I contrast Dulce Chacón’s expression of

nostalgia with the others in the book arguing that La voz dormida (The
Sleeping Voice) presents a restorative nostalgic intertextual employment of
texts and past motifs. The novel offers an entryway to examine the paradoxes
of narratives that portray a dystopic period to inform readers about state
terror and, at the same time, invite us to imagine a period of unfaltering
solidarity and revolutionary commitments. La voz dormida (2002b) is a testi-
monial inflected narrative that spans the years 1939–1963 and tells the trajec-
tory of a group of communist women who were incarcerated in Madrid’s
Ventas prison for their support of the Republican side in the Spanish Civil
War. As the title suggests, Chacón seeks to use her narrative as a tool to
awaken the “dormant” voices of the past and to unearth memories of state
violence. Chacón also looks to the traumatic experiences of women during a
time of dictatorial repression as a source of inspiration for cultural regenera-
tion. Through the author’s nostalgic gaze, readers envision female bonding as
a powerful act of resistance at a time when bonds among the anti-Franco
opposition were meant to be broken. Whereas this paradoxical performance
of memory is mitigated by a nuanced treatment of revolution and gender by
other authors and filmmakers in this book, Chacón locates dictatorial trauma
within a romantic narrative of bygone heroism and sacrifice. This chapter
problematizes Chacón’s novel, but it avoids a sweeping dismissal of her
work. It suggests that this kind of nostalgia might serve as an antidote that
may counter disenchantment and generate interest in the past. Given that
Chacón’s novel manifestly energized readers, authors, and political leaders,
this chapter considers the role of restorative nostalgia in creating reflection
and calling for redress.
In “Nostalgia and Inner Exile,” I focus on Almudena Grandes’s El
corazón helado (The Frozen Heart, 2007) and El lector de Julio Verne (The
Reader of Jules Verne, 2012). These novels portray not only alliances forged
in adversity, but also social fractures stemming from displacement, betrayal,
loss, and gendered repression. Spanning a full century from 1900–2005, El
corazón helado (2007) is an epic novel by Almudena Grandes that traces the
interlocking stories of two families, one associated with the Franco regime
and the other with the Second Republic. The narrative takes readers from a
first-person account set in the post-dictatorial present to a third-person ac-
count set during the Spanish Civil War and postwar. These temporal shifts
and multiple voices allow the author to construct a highly nuanced portrait of
the political roots that engendered the Spanish Civil War generation, as well
as their progeny. The protagonist discovers his parents’ complicity with the
Franco regime and the ideological differences between his father and his
paternal grandmother, who died as a political prisoner in a Francoist deten-
tion center. His realizations of how his own family both suffered and benefit-
ted from the horrors of Francoist despotism ultimately lead him to seek a
50 Introduction

sense of belonging within a Republican lineage that had been effaced from
the family narrative.
In “Nostalgia and Inner Exile,” I also examine El lector de Julio Verne, a
coming of age story set during the clandestine resistance of 1947–1949 and
narrated by Nino, the son of a civil guard. Through the lens of childhood
memories, the author envisions radical acts of collective responsibility and
resistance to the discrimination of political and cultural “others” and con-
ceives of alternatives to the class and gender hierarchies of Franco’s Spain.
Like Chacón’s La voz dormida, El lector de Julio Verne, and El corazón
helado show a shift from a focus on the prewar past to a nostalgia for the
postwar period. Both authors imbue the experience of political persecution
and inner exile with a sense of companionship. Characters come together in
their principal opposition to injustice experienced by women and the politi-
cally marginalized in National-Catholic patriarchy. But if Chacón renders an
unambiguous portrait of political activism, Grandes complicates these expe-
riences to offer greater insight into the challenges posed by political conflict.
While upholding a spirit of defiance to nationalist narratives, Grandes com-
municates the belief that roots are numerous and origin stories are messy.
In the final chapter “Detective Pursuits of an Ironic Nostalgic” I analyze
how Roberto Bolaño brings together irony, parody, metafiction, and nostal-
gia in his 1996 novel Estrella distante (Distant Star, 2005a). Memory itself is
the subject of interrogation as the reader witnesses how memory is config-
ured and reconfigured in response to evolving historical conditions. The
story involves a semi-autobiographical first-person narrator named Arturo B
who tries to unravel the circumstances surrounding the murders and exploits
committed by the neo-fascist poet Carlos Wieder. Fueling his investigation, I
will argue, is the unsettling-ironic nostalgia for the political milieu of the
Allende years and the loss of the disappeared individuals that the narrator
associates with that epoch. As in the case of Últimos días de la historia, the
narrator’s nostalgia largely functions as a response to his own lack of partici-
pation and resistance. At every opportunity, the narrator bespeaks his longing
to identify with those years, but at the same time, he points to the seams and
erasures in his own account as well as those of others.
In some ways, Estrella distante is a forerunner for the novels that came
later; however, instead of situating it chronologically in the book (preceding
Últimos días de la historia) it is placed at the end as it dialogues with the
other chapters. By positioning the novel after the others, we can complicate
dominant views of nostalgia and imagine a nostalgia spectrum or a “nostal-
giascape.” The book begins with multiple representations of unsettling nos-
talgia then moves to a quintessential restorative nostalgic novel by Dulce
Chacón. Rather than end there in a predictable linear fashion, we return to
unsettling nostalgia and bring out some of its most unexpected manifesta-
tions. Reading Estrella distante after La voz dormida brings out the greatest
 Introduction 51

contrast between nostalgias since there is no trace of restorative nostalgia that

is not attacked and dismantled though irony and parody. Since the novel
follows the semi-autobiographical narrator from Chile to exile in Spain, Es-
trella distante also encapsulates the transatlantic connections that I trace in
the introduction.
These narratives allow me to mark various positions on a continuum of
popular and academic reception. This corpus represents texts that are canoni-
cal and non-canonical. As we know, Roberto Bolaño has become a major
international literary figure and most of his novels, including Estrella dis-
tante, have been translated into numerous languages. El corazón helado by
Almudena Grandes and La voz dormida by Dulce Chacón had a broad popu-
lar appeal within Spain and have been translated into English, but have
received less international attention in comparison with Bolaño. Significantly
contrasting with these three authors, the novels and films of Roberto Brod-
sky, Carmen Castillo, and Carolina Astudillo are relatively uncharted by
academics, and their work is somewhat challenging to obtain even in Chile.
With this selection, Unsettling Nostalgia offers an untrodden conceptual ap-
proach to the works of established authors as well as emerging writers and
filmmakers.
This book closes with a story of transatlantic crossings, similar to the way
that it opens in the preface. This time the focus is on a woman named
Michelle Peña whose image adorns the cover of this book. By briefly exam-
ining multiple versions of her family’s struggles that begin in Spain and
continue in Chile, I reiterate the value of a connective and intersectional
approach to doing memory studies. The final chapter also goes beyond a
summary of nostalgia’s heterogeneous nature by pointing to the limitations
of this book’s reach. I signal areas where work needs to be done to better
understand the process and meaning of nostalgic memorialization after dicta-
torial repression. As a way to inspire new research, the final chapter posits
several unanswered questions that might continue the debate and contribute
to a more profound understanding of nostalgia and the larger matter of how
Spaniards and Chileans are dealing with the lingering trauma of political
terror and the loss of revolutionary horizons in the aftermath of the military
regimes.

NOTES

1. Kimberlé Crenshaw, lawyer, civil rights advocate and scholar, coined the term “intersec-
tionality.” See “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against
Women of Color” (1991). It is now a widely-used foundational term to analyze the intercon-
nected nature of social categorizations and to understand how multiple forms of privilege and
marginalization interact.
2. “Vine a España porque quería rendir homenaje a un hombre que también luchó contra el
comunismo.”
52 Introduction

3. “Si los comunistas que siempre acechan en la oscuridad no plantean problemas, España
llegará a alcanzar grandes metas y ser un país grande como lo fue en el pasado.”
4. Diana Taylor offers an insightful reading of similar processes in Argentina in her book
Disappearing Acts (183).
5. “La real para ti no es esa España obscena y deprimente, En la que regentea hoy la
canalla, Sino esta España viva y siempre noble, Que Galdós en sus libros ha creado. De aquélla
nos consuela y cura ésta” (cited in Grandes 2012).
6. The school textbook El niño republicano (1932), written by Joaquín Seró Sabaté, is one
exemplary textbook that imagined a burgeoning revolutionary internationalist republican iden-
tity in contrast with the colonialist patriarchal past. It is that pre-dictatorial time-space and its
incomplete transformative social and political projects that becomes the impossible homeland
in both the exile imagination as well as the late twentieth-century post-revolutionary discourse.
7. Balmes was born in 1927 in Catalonia. In 1939, he fled Spain with his family in the
Winnipeg. During the Popular Unity, he supported Allende and later went into exile to France
during the Pinochet regime. In 1986, he returned to Chile and in 2012 the Chilean filmmaker
Pablo Trujillo Novoa made a documentary about his life titled Balmes: el doble exilio de la
pintura (The Double Exile Balmes: Nostalgic Vision in Painting). On the Winnipeg, also see
Angelina Vásquez and Manuel Délano.
8. “La vida se fue haciendo con nacimientos y muertes. Pero aprendimos a pertenecer. Fue
un ‘descubrimiento’ de América al revés y sin vencedores” (cited in Gálvez Barraza).
9. For more information on the various stages in the development of the museum, see the
organizational website for the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende (MSSA) [Museum of
Solidarity Salvador Allende] http://mssa.cl/the-museum-2/
10. López Quiñones argues, “Todas las esperanzas depositadas por algunos sectores de la
izquierda en la muerte del dictador y en algún tipo de ruptura radical se vieron frustradas, en
parte por una transición tan rupturista como continuista, y en parte por un contexto generaliza-
do en el que las grandes narrativas revolucionarias y los grandes proyectos transformadores de
la izquierda entraron en un claro momento de impasse. Resulta consecuente que, ante la
dificultad para elaborar visiones utópicas del futuro, estas últimas encuentren un espacio
simbólico en el pasado y en aquellos momentos del pasado que albergaron un potencial trans-
formador” (López Quiñones 2006, 201)
 Chapter One

Unsettling Nostalgia in Roberto

Brodsky’s Últimos días de la historia

How has the revolutionary climate that characterized the Allende years
(1970–1973) in Chile transformed over the past five decades? 1 What distin-
guishes the Chilean leftist political culture of the twenty-first century from
that of the years preceding the Pinochet dictatorship and what social, politi-
cal, and cultural factors have shaped that difference? In her book When the
Romance Ended (2000), Katherine Hite observes, “The contrasts between the
Chile of the 1960s and the Chile of today are apparent. Gone are the mass
mobilizations in the streets and the calls for revolutionary change” (Hite
2000, 187). Hite demonstrates that the 1997 congressional elections saw a
dramatic decrease in voter participation from the unprecedented 90 percent
voter turnout in the 1988 plebiscite to end the military dictatorship. As a
result of the sharp decline in voter participation, the center-left Coalition
government sought to reinvigorate voters by laying out their accomplish-
ments and goals. But, unlike the Popular Unity’s emotionally charged, albeit
controversial, electoral victory in 1970, the Concertació n’s success in 2000
was less than euphoric. The center-left candidate Ricardo Lagos won the
presidential election by a narrow margin in a final runoff with the ultracon-
servative neoliberal economist candidate of the Independent Democrat Union
Joaquín Lavín. We should recall that Lavín studied economics at the Univer-
sity of Chicago and was also the political editor of the conservative news-
paper El Mercurio. A member of the ultra-conservative Opus Dei, Lavín
wrote Una revolució n silenciosa in 1988 in support of Pinochet's economic
policies.
“We broke an authoritarian system,” Lagos had claimed twelve years
earlier following the successful “No” campaign in 1988 that ended Pino-
chet’s fifteen-year rule (Greenwald, 1988). The campaign’s slogan, “Chile, la
53
54 Chapter 1

alegría ya viene” indeed brought an invigorated sense of hope to a leftist

populace scarred by the authoritarian regime. However, throughout the
1990s, the Concertació n failed to remove the impunity of many state agents
responsible for human rights crimes and additionally curtailed the demands
of torture victims and families of the disappeared. 2 Some observers, such as
Tomá s Moulian, call Chile’s transition to democracy a time of forgetting;
yet, such an analysis seems to understate the work of artists, workers, stu-
dents, human rights activists, the press, and many others that refused to allow
the process of the transition to go unquestioned. I do, however, support
Moulian’s conceptualization of a politics of “whitewashing,” or an effort by
the architects of the transition to minimize the victims’ lingering trauma to
defend the neoliberal economic project implemented by the regime. Moulian
argues, “The whitewashing of Pinochet was a way of acknowledging that his
mistake was in his choice of means, but not in the ends which he pursued”
(Moulian 1998, 20).
Indeed, the Concertació n sought to concentrate on capitalist moderniza-
tion, which meant a move towards a “pragmatic model of transition as recon-
ciliation which entailed a demand for forgiveness without a complete revela-
tion of the past and acknowledgement of wrongdoing, and without broad
access to justice” (Frazier 1999, 107). This form of reconciliation played a
key role in the maintenance of the neoliberal political framework, which was
conceived of by many of the transition’s architects with a teleological con-
ception of history. Such a conception eluded a critical analysis of the social
and political causes and consequences of the military’s usurpation of power
and instead sought a justification of the takeover.
But the Concertació n’s focus on neoliberal modernization not only en-
tailed soft-pedaling human rights abuses; it also involved an emphasis on
consumption and individualism rather than on political mobilization and soli-
darity. For Moulian, Chilean culture had been significantly depoliticized and
“transformed into a bourgeois culture based exclusively on competitive indi-
vidualism, which encourages disinterest in public affairs through its obses-
sive ‘me’ culture” (Moulian 1998, 20). Consequently, for many women and
men who spent years opposing the military dictatorship, the transition to
democracy in Chile was an enormous disappointment. In No Apocalypse, No
Integration (2001), Martín Hopenhayn suggests that the cultural and political
ethos at the turn of the century in Chile can be characterized by an unre-
solved tension between “agony and transfiguration” (Hopenhayn 2001, x). 3
That is to say, the cultural climate is charged with a sense of skepticism on
one hand, and a hopeful desire to revive the bygone utopist discourses prom-
ising progressive change on the other. While Hopenhayen expresses disen-
chantment with the Marxist model and the Enlightenment’s engines of
progress (science, commerce, and government) to yield positive change, he
conveys an urgency to resist the forces of integration into the neoliberal
 Unsettling Nostalgia in Roberto Brodsky’s Últimos días de la historia 55

system. He urges the exploration of discourses of difference, symbolic ac-

tion, and popular culture that is neither apocalyptic nor integrated (Hopen-
hayn 2001, 46). How, then, might Chilean authors and artists carve out a
space for a creative and constructive nostalgia that draws inspiration from
memories of the revolutionary atmosphere of the Allende years and at the
same time avoids the deadfalls of indiscriminate idealizations?
An interview with the novelist Robert Brodsky (b. 1957) published in
2000 offers a starting point to engage with this question as he reflects on
what he views as the most salient consequence of the Pinochet regime. He
suggested that the dictatorship transformed the leftist base that remained in
Chile from one that believed in the promise of socialist transformation, to
one shattered by defeat and regret. “Clinging to the Concertation govern-
ments or simply feeling despair in the city, everyone ended up changing their
horizon and crying, sometimes, for that solidarity so dear and so dead.”
[“Adheridos a los gobiernos de la Concertació n o nada más desamparados en
la ciudad, todos terminaron cambiando de horizonte y llorando, a veces, por
esa solidaridad querida y tan muerta”] (Brodsky 2000, 10). With this state-
ment Brodsky observes that one of the regime’s most far-reaching legacies
was a sense of disenchantment that left many yearning for what he calls that
element of solidarity between people and groups (Brodsky 2000, 10). This
interview, titled “Today Betrayal Has Become the Norm” (“Hoy la traición
se ha vuelto norma”), appeared in El Mercurio after the publication of his
first novel El peor de los héroes (1999), a hybrid historical-detective novel
that follows a lawyer’s effort to unravel the mysteries of a young man disap-
peared during the military regime. The author went on to publish Último dias
de la historia (2001), El arte de callor (2004), Bosque quemado (2007), El
veneno (2012), and Casa chilena (2015) among others. He is also the co-
script writer of the feature film Machuca (2004), and the documentary Mi
vida con Carlos (2010).
While Brodsky’s reflections convey a wistful longing for the past, he
simultaneously projects a sense of resistance to accept the Pinochet after-
math. His work ventures beyond the limitations usually associated with mel-
ancholia and undertakes an important critique not only of the inability to
bring Pinochet and other military officers to justice, but also the contempo-
rary discourse of neoliberal capitalism and national reconciliation whose
emphasis is oriented around modernization and individualism and whose
premise is to leave the past behind. In this chapter, I examine Últimos días de
la historia (2001), a novel that dramatizes the reactions of the generation that
transitioned into adulthood during the events surrounding the military coup.
The protagonist adopts a nostalgic gaze towards the years of the UP as a
response to both the sociopolitical upheaval unfurled by the coup and to his
own sense of dejection in the aftermath of the regime. By analyzing plot
devices, narrative strategies, and character representations, I argue that the
56 Chapter 1

text offers us a window to conceptualize an alternative form of nostalgia,

“unsettling nostalgia,” that goes beyond its usual meaning as an uncritical
idealization of the past that assumes a dichotomy between past and present.
Unsettling nostalgia moves us away from that escapist longing for the re-
trieval of a bygone era and toward questions concerning the interwoven
relationship between the emotional, the historical, the political, and the cultu-
ral, and how these influence the present.
The novel has sixteen untitled chapters, but it could be separated into
three historical moments in the narrator’s life; the UP period (1970–1973),
the coup d’état and dictatorship (1973–1990) and the postdictatorial present
(1996). The novel begins in 1996 behind a curtain at a Santiago nightclub
where the main character, Lalo, awaits his moment of appearance on stage.
He is a middle-aged professor and father by day and a masked performer by
night. What ensues in the bar is an unexpected encounter with Cacho, a one-
time friend in the audience who reminds Lalo of who he once was and who
he has become. As an adolescent, Lalo was optimistic and unencumbered by
the traumatic memories of the military coup. After years of living under the
authoritarian regime in an unhappy marriage and an unfulfilling career, he
now finds himself unengaged in meaningful relationships. But Lalo also
reminds Cacho of his own past. After the coup, he and his family fled into
exile, and as a consequence, Cacho severed all emotional ties with both Chile
and Lalo. It is no coincidence that he is now part of a team of international
experts visiting Chile for a conference on environmental problems in Santia-
go. Such a detail reminds us of the dregs of capitalist consumption, visible in
the sooty pollution that hovers over the capital, and by extension the draw-
backs of urban development and modernity.
The encounter between these two old friends produces an extended flash-
back in the form of a first-person confession by Lalo that traces the experi-
ences that shaped his identity. Lalo’s circumstances in the present are juxta-
posed with vivid memories of his adolescence during the Unidad Popular, a
time in which he discovered both socialist politics and sexual desire. But the
excitement of those years was truncated in 1973 with the military coup. He
flees to Argentina and lives with relatives in an upscale porteño neighbor-
hood, where he invokes the memory of Allende as a symbol of socialist
commitment to a progressive agenda. However, Lalo not only clings to real
memories while in exile; he also invents others. His nostalgic stories about
his involvement in the construction of the “Vía Chilena al Socialismo” and
his subsequent heroic resistance to the military coup are at variance with the
reality of his minimal action during and after the coup. On one hand, nostal-
gia for the protagonist becomes an escape—a panacea for the postcoup ills
that allows him to take refuge in the romanticized days of yesteryear while
avoiding a confrontation with the present. On the other hand, nostalgia en-
ables the narrator to establish a sense of belonging within a cultural move-
 Unsettling Nostalgia in Roberto Brodsky’s Últimos días de la historia 57

ment and body politic that Pinochet and his supporters sought to eliminate.
According to Stuart Tannock, nostalgia “invokes a positively evaluated past
in response to a deficient present world. The nostalgic subject turns to the
past to find/construct sources of identity, agency, or community, that are felt
to be lacking, blocked, subverted, or threatened in the present” (Tannock
1995, 454). The novel, therefore, stages the multiple functions of nostalgia; it
can be both a meaning-providing resource that mitigates traumatic memories
as well as a form of escapism.
When the protagonist returns home, however, he is not afforded the indul-
gences of the bittersweet recollections of the Chile that he had imagined
through a symbolic return. Soon he finds another escape, this time within the
university where his research of prehistoric paintings symbolizes his distance
from the recent past. Years later, he orchestrates a cathartic performance with
an unusual sex-machine at a nightclub as a political and philosophical re-
sponse to the aftermath of the regime. With his performance, he not only
engages memories of Chile’s recent past, but he also performs and embodies
those memories. Nostalgia becomes a performable emotion. His performance
can be characterized by what Dominic LaCapra theorizes as “acting out” and
“working through.” In Writing History, Writing Trauma (2001) LaCapra
argues that “working through” entails a necessary critical distance from pain-
ful recollections, which might allow the individual to distinguish between
past, present and future (LaCapra 2001, 143–44). In contrast, “acting out”
involves a fixation with past traumatic experiences whereby the individual
relives them in a pattern of repetition and return (i.e., through flashbacks and
nightmares). In Representing the Holocaust (1994) LaCapra contends that
“acting out” and “working through” are not entirely at odds but can coexist.
Lalo’s performance portrays this process of “acting out” and “working
through” insofar as he is engaged in a constant repetition of traumatic memo-
ries; however, this repetition is not debilitating but rather a way for him to be
an ethical and political agent.
The performance of memory that Brodsky conceptualizes could be com-
pared to the archaeological excavation that Walter Benjamin describes in
“Excavation of Memory” (1932): “He who seeks to approach his buried past
must conduct himself like a man digging. Above all, he must not be afraid to
return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to
turn it over as one turns over soil” (Benjamin 1999, 576). An analysis of
Brodsky’s Últimos días allows us to imagine that process. In what follows, I
trace the critical dimensions of nostalgia through a close reading of the
protagonist’s performance with the sex machine, a clever plot device. The
show, which combines nostalgic memories of the precoup years with dystop-
ic memories of the overthrow, provides a way of working through the past
for the fragmented self. I then analyze the protagonist’s flashbacks, which
frame emotionally charged memories of the Unidad Popular and the military
58 Chapter 1

seizure of power. Finally, I discuss the concluding encounter between the

main characters. These moments exhibit nostalgia’s evaluative capacity
through a critical reflection on the past as well as a perceptive critique of the
call for reconciliation and closure without redress.

LONGING FOR A “HISTORICAL AWAKENING”

As noted, Ú ltimos días opens in a nightclub around 1996, where a diverse

group of “Santiaguinos” gathers to drink and watch performances. 4 This
crowd includes both Chile’s forty-something generation (born in the mid-
1950s) that spent their formative years during the Popular Unity government
and Chile’s “Generation X” born during the 1970s. While some of the Chi-
lean youths that frequent the bar do not understand Lalo’s performances,
many of the spectators accept him and identify with him. Lalo explains:

It is true that some are openly gay and others are looking for a bi scene, but
most aren’t. They are people who have lost their way, bearing their own
withdrawal like an injustice scarred on their faces, like an acceptance of regret
that does not know or need revenge any longer. In their grim wisdom, they
recognize that they have survived history as they are. They are characters who
do not fight or shout beyond the enthusiasm with which they howl at the
nightclub. (Brodsky 2001, 126) 5

Brodsky renders two disenchanted generations; one that had dedicated im-
portant years of their lives to defeat the Pinochet regime, and another that
came into adulthood when Chilean society had already become immersed in
an accelerated neoliberal capitalist system. The disenchantment of the former
generation was embedded in an understanding of the disparity between the
sacrifice put towards the anti-Pinochet resistance and the nominal achieve-
ment of reform during the transition. Here we see a salient connection with
the post-Franco Spanish context. Jo Labanyi observes, “The left’s desencanto
was rooted in an awareness of the discrepancy between the enormous energy
invested over the long years of the anti-Franco struggles and the minimal
concessions to leveling social and economic reform gained as a result of the
transition” (Graham and Labanyi 1995, 313). In Ú ltimos días Brodsky de-
picts a site that brings together multiple generations and forms of disenchant-
ment. For Chile’s Generation X, disillusionment was arguably a product of
the cultural environment of the regime, which was one of censorship, propa-
ganda, secrecy, and neoliberal capitalist culture that emphasized individual-
ism and consumption. What this generation had in common with the 1970s
generation during the mid-to-late 1990s was a similar response; a withdrawal
from political activism. Hopenhayen observes that “withdrawal, defeatism,
demobilization, lack of will power, exacerbated individualism, fear, anguish,
 Unsettling Nostalgia in Roberto Brodsky’s Últimos días de la historia 59

and cynicism” are all symptoms of a “crisis of utopia” that has produced a
“somnambulant” society (Hopenhayn 2001, 143). I agree with Hopenhayen,
yet this state should not be confused with a state of amnesia, as Historian
Steve Stern argues:

Cultural belief by a majority in the truth of cruel human rupture and persecu-
tion under dictatorship, and in the moral urgency of justice, unfolded alongside
political belief that Pinochet, the military, and their social base of supporters
and sympathizers remained too strong for Chile to take logical “next steps”
along the road of truth and justice. The result was not so much a culture of
forgetting, as a culture that oscillated . . . between prudence and convulsion.
(Stern 2004, xxix)

Lalo performs this anxious space between “prudence and convulsion” in

Ú ltimos dí as de la historia. What ensues at the nightclub is Lalo’s abstract
performance, which blends representations of pivotal moments in Chile’s
recent past with intimate, fragmented personal memories of euphoria, defeat,
and shame. In the words of Lalo himself, his performance is “un viaje
sinóptico sobre las islas de la memoria” (Brodsky 2001, 14) [a synoptic trip
on the islands of memory]. He is dressed as a ghost and seeks to conjure
repressed memories of trauma and political violence, which continue to
haunt the present. Discussing the image of the specter in contemporary Span-
ish cultural production, Jo Labanyi contends, “The trope of haunting, which
elides direct representation of the past in favor of the representation of its
after effects, stresses the legacy of the past to the present: a legacy which—as
in most ghost stories—is one of injustice requiring reparation” (Labanyi
2007, 113). The phantom trope in Ú ltimos dí as bespeaks the lingering pres-
ence of memories of the disappeared and the traumatic events surrounding
the military coup. Such events cannot be narrated comprehensively or linear-
ly, but instead represented in discontinuous sketches that blend myth and
history, fact and fiction. Lalo’s conceptual performance expresses an aware-
ness of the problematic nature of narratives that seek to represent traumatic
experiences in an unruffled account.
Moreover, the protagonist’s show appeals to the conventions of oral nar-
rative. More abstract than “fact” oriented, each presentation evokes specific
moments in Lalo’s life. Among them, the afternoon of September 11 when
he and Cacho watched Pinochet’s Hawker-Hunter jets fly towards La Mone-
da and the sexual episodes that he once had with Cacho and his sister, Toña.
However, in his performance, these sexual episodes involve an elaborate
hermaphroditical sex machine adorned with red lights and elastic tubes that
insufficiently substitutes his former companions. The sex-machine, which
represents technology, modernity, and progress, appears to be designed to
fulfill Lalo’s desires to recreate experiences from the past. However, the
machine destroys itself after an ejaculation of artificial semen above the
60 Chapter 1

crowd, suggesting the failure of modernity as well as Lalo’s inability to

recuperate the past and establish continuity.
As part of a reenactment of September 11, Lalo prompts the crowd to
press on the sex machine’s lateral sides to provoke an explosion. Such a
collective experience of feverishness, chaos, and claustrophobia seems to be
meant to evoke the atmosphere of the coup. Meanwhile, his stagehand con-
trols the machine from backstage and causes it to suddenly discharge a thick
stream of white liquid resembling semen from a large red artificial penis. The
liquid jets towards a colorful balloon suspended from the ceiling, which
bursts open upon impact and showers an assortment of sex toys onto the
crowd. Lalo’s show, which combines convulsive memories with a flexible
and playful view of erotic desire, can be read as an expression of a queer
aesthetics and a vision of sexual liberation. Lalo’s performance rejects both
the heteronormative discourse promulgated by the Pinochet regime, which
championed the strict binary gender system and a strong emphasis on pro-
creative sex, as well as the current cultural context of the post-dictatorship.
Of course, the marginalization of the underground bar is revealing of the
society in which the protagonist lives, where full legal recognition of same-
sex couples and anti-discrimination laws were nonexistent. Adult, consensu-
al, same-sex sexual activity was illegal in Chile until 1999, and it was a
change implemented only after intense struggle.
Looking back before the Pinochet regime, the disciplining of sexual “oth-
ers” was an integral component of the conservative program of Carlos Ibáñez
del Campo, a military dictator who ruled from 1927–1931 and again from
1952–1958. The Ibáñez dictatorship was responsible for raids, arrests, im-
prisonment and the execution or disappearance of gay men. As Lessie Jo
Frazier points out in Salt in the Sand, the Pisagua prison that kept political
prisoners out of sight during the Pinochet regime had a long history as a
sexual “correction” center for gay men, namely under the Ibá ñez del Campo
regime (Frazier 2007, 168). That continuity remains underexamined as only a
small number of authors, among them Pedro Lemebel, have discussed the
repression of gay men and transgender people in Pisagua. Today, nearly two
decades after the 2001 publication of Últimos días, LGBT rights in Chile are
still limited. While Brodsky does not explicitly reference these histories, he
engages the question of sexuality in his critique of the Pinochet regime and
the ongoing existence of repression of sexual “others” in the post-dictatorial
present.
The machine’s masturbatory ejaculation into the air can also be read as a
quickly dissipating moment of pleasure or symbolically as the end of the
short-lived Popular Unity years. While the Popular Unity failed to embrace
the LGBT liberation movements, the UP years became a time in which many
marginalized groups began to demand equal rights in the larger processes of
social change. It was an uneven process, for instance, the leftist press Clarín,
 Unsettling Nostalgia in Roberto Brodsky’s Últimos días de la historia 61

(referenced in the prologue), used a homophobic discourse to insult right-

wing political candidates and published reports that characterized gay men as
“locas” or “yeguas.” Against that backdrop, in early 1973 the first openly gay
march took place in Santiago in the Plaza de Armas. In contrast with the
political horizons represented by the demonstration, Pinochet’s patriarchal
rhetoric, which emphasized heteronormative sexuality, conformity, patriot-
ism, and economic ascension, fomented an environment that epitomized po-
litical repression and cultural regression. That makes all the more valiant the
creative and disruptive interventions by groups like Las Yeguas del Apocalip-
sis (The Mares of the Apocalypse), formed in 1987 by Pedro Lemebel and
Francisco Casas. As evident in their name, the group reclaimed and sub-
verted homophobic and religious ideologies by performing and rendering
visible trans and non-heteronormative identities that continued to be margi-
nalized even by leftist opponents of the dictatorship. That context is brilliant-
ly captured in the novel Tengo miedo torero by Lemebel, which was also
published in 2001. In Últimos días Brodsky alludes to these histories in
vignettes. His use of Hadean motifs (the subterranean bar and Lalo’s role as a
ghost) symbolizes an ironic twist that mocks the Pinochetistas’ claim that the
military coup saved Chile from so-called moral decay and chaos. The sex
toys showered onto the Chilean public could be read as a representation of
collective sexual freedom, or conversely as a sign of individual pleasure,
perhaps signaling to the solipsism, narcissism, and consumerism promoted
by the market-driven economy implemented by the regime. Therein lies the
complexity of Brodsky’s Últimos días.
After each performance, which Lalo presents every weekend, eight times
a month, the sex machine destroys itself. As symbolized in the wreckage,
Lalo’s desire to create an authentic representation of his past experiences,
and therefore work through them, is ultimately a chimera. Despite the futility
of his attempts, however, Lalo continuously reconstructs the machine for his
next performance. His fruitless search for meaning in the face of an absurd
world is reminiscent of Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). Camus
juxtaposes the absurdity of modern life with the life of Sisyphus, a figure of
Greek mythology condemned by Zeus for his craftiness to incessantly repeat
the same inconsequential task of pushing a rock up a mountain, only to see it
rumble down again. But Camus concludes that he would like to imagine
Sisyphus happy. The existence of Sisyphus, like that of the narrator in Brod-
sky’s Últimos días, is tragic when he fixedly gazes back at the life that he
was forced to abandon. When he focuses on the task at hand (the perfor-
mance of memory), rather than the desire to return, he might possibly find
some semblance to joy.
What the protagonist arguably seeks to instigate with his performance is
what Benjamin has termed in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiograph-
ical Writings a “historical awakening” (Benjamin 1978, 162). As such, the
62 Chapter 1

goal of Lalo’s performance is to galvanize the audience and to compel them

to think critically about the relationship between the past dictatorship and the
present post-dictatorship. The production, then, becomes a symbolic action
that is “neither apocalyptic nor integrated” to use Hopenhayen’s terminolo-
gy. It is one that projects memories of political violence into a public space
within which individuals with diverse backgrounds and generational claims
might engage in debates about the recent past and its legacy. Rather than
profess to resolve the crisis of utopia, the protagonist seeks to produce what
Hopenhayen calls a “mobilizing effect of shaking up the gregarious skepti-
cism that has spread out under the eaves of the crisis” (Hopenhayen 2001,
143).
Benjamin’s critique of modern progress is explicit in Lalo’s conceptual-
ization of his performance. In an interview, a journalist questions Lalo’s
intentions and insinuates that the show was not “una propuesta dramática” [a
dramatic proposal] but rather “la sórdida aventura de un lunático avejentado”
[the sordid adventure of an aged lunatic] (Brodsky 2001, 122). In response,
Lalo sustains that he is not a second-rate stripper but rather an artist and his
motivation is not to titillate but to teach: “I consider myself an artist, I told
him, someone who interprets for others, and also a pedagogue. . . . what
motivates me is the decay of our perception. My show is not more than that:
a crystal ball turned towards the past” (Brodsky 2001, 123). 6 The continuities
between the dictatorship and the postdictatorship and the consequent lack of
historical reflection are at the heart of his critique. He proceeds to make a
direct reference to Benjamin as he points to “Benjamin’s little book” (Brod-
sky 2001, 123). We can imagine that the little book is Benjamin’s frequently
cited Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), a work that elaborates a
critique of the notion of “historical progress.” Inspired by a drawing by Paul
Klee (1879–1940) called “Angelus Novus,” Benjamin describes an angel of
history whose eyes point toward the right, while the rest of the body is turned
leftward, suggesting thwarted movement or a conflict between past and fu-
ture. Benjamin writes that the angel sees in the past,

one single catastrophe that keeps piling wreckage on wreckage and hurls it in
front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make
whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from paradise; it has got
caught in his wings with such violence and the angel can no longer close them.
The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned,
while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call
progress. (Benjamin 1968, 257)

Benjamin’s “Angelus Novus” recalls Hegel’s allegorical “Owl of Miner-

va”—the Roman goddess of wisdom who spreads her wings only at nightfall,
representing the notion that only hindsight enables comprehension of the
past. Benjamin’s metaphor additionally serves to criticize the teleological
 Unsettling Nostalgia in Roberto Brodsky’s Últimos días de la historia 63

view of history that all events stem from a linear cause and effect relation-
ship, and that the sequence of events together amounts to “progress.” Benja-
min observes the disenchanted present and challenges the prophets of the
Enlightenment that ground a conception of utopia on a teleological under-
standing of time. In Últimos días, Brodsky alludes to Benjamin’s angel to
articulate a response to the justifications of Pinochet’s usurpation of power
and the triumphalist claims that the regime’s neoliberal program was histori-
cally necessary. In his performance, the protagonist of Últimos días physical-
ly embodies an angel (or devil) of history who attempts to haunt the public
and to salvage fragments from the past. Nevertheless, as we observe through
the journalist’s cynicism, Lalo lacks a receptive social space and wider pub-
lic that allows itself to be haunted by unsettling memories of the past. The
only space where the protagonist’s counterhegemonic poetic discourse might
encounter an authentic reverberation is in a counter-culture nightclub. Per-
haps what we can conclude is that Lalo’s performance of memory, which
combines mourning for the regime’s victims with a political protest, exem-
plifies both the radical courses of action as well as the limitations of cultural
resistance in the post-dictatorial present.

NOSTALGIA FOR A LOST CULTURAL AND POLITICAL MILIEU

Lalo’s performance incorporates recorded music, a spectacle of lights, and

video clips to narrate unchronological memories of a traumatic past. This
nonlinear narrative approach highlights the incomprehensibility of the re-
gime’s violence and undermines Pinochet’s official discourse of order and
reason. In contrast with this narrative strategy, Lalo’s first-person confession
recounts emblematic events in chronological order, which begin with Al-
lende’s electoral victory in 1970. The narrator’s reflections upon his present
(1996) constantly insert themselves onto his memories of the past. For in-
stance, when the narrator explores memories of the bombing of La Moneda,
he suddenly shifts to a reflection on his performance in which he represents
those experiences. These fluid temporal shifts accentuate the past’s continu-
ous influence upon the present. History in the novel is not a distant settled
narrative, but rather, an open contentious debate that always impinges upon
the present.
Central to Lalo’s flashback of his formative years is the relationship
between memory and identity (political, cultural, religious, and sexual). Lalo
is the grandson of both middle-class, nonpracticing Catholic Chileans on his
mother’s side, and Ukrainian communist Jewish immigrants that escaped the
Ukrainian pogroms during the first decades of the century on his father’s
side. After Pinochet’s military coup—which was shot through with anti-
communism and anti-Semitism—Lalo begins to identify with his grandfather
64 Chapter 1

who went into exile first in Argentina and later in Chile under threat of
systematic religious and ethnic persecution. In addition, the author accounts
for the complexities of sexual identity through the protagonist. That is to say,
it is unclear if he identifies as heterosexual, bisexual, or gay. This multifac-
eted characterization demonstrates that the author does not work with catego-
ries of identity in isolation or through a binary perspective. Questions of
gender, ethnic, religious, political, and sexual identity are interwoven. Brod-
sky’s portrait of Lalo serves to show how subordination in the context of the
Pinochet regime cannot be adequately understood without paying attention to
the intersections of identity.
The first half of the flashback frames nostalgic memories of sexual exper-
imentation, collective solidarity, and revolutionary dreams, while the second
half of the flashback renders a time of social upheaval that produced fear and
a sense of alienation. Brodsky conceives of the 1973 military coup as a
disruption in time that signaled a “before” and an “after.” The overthrow was
“a dislocation of time, a division between a before and after, a rupture that
has completely served the present, which is now skewed as a mere symbol of
supreme conquest” (Brodsky 2001, 97). 7 This fragment, as well as the title,
engages Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man (1992), in
which the political economist triumphantly contends that the end of the Cold
War proved that the struggle between ideologies had come to an end, with
the world choosing liberal democracy as opposed to socialism. As Frazier
points out, on his 1992 visit to Chile, Fukuyama “praised Chile’s economic
development as ‘extraordinary’ because it led to the ‘autolegitimation’ of the
market” and claimed that “Chile was an example of the greater possibilities
for economic growth under authoritarian governments than under democratic
regimes” (Frazier 2007, 247). Insofar as Últimos días doubts the possibility
of a quickly approaching undoing of capitalism through its own destructive
evolution, one could argue that Brodsky inadvertently sustains Fukuyama’s
hypothesis. But unlike Fukuyama, Brodsky mourns neoliberalism’s conquest
and renders the so-called end of history not positively, but rather as a time
when a progressive socialist project was replaced with a culturally regressive
and politically repressive regime upheld by censorship, exploitative low
wages, and social inequalities. Further, the author refuses to assume a nihilis-
tic position but instead advocates symbolic action that, to use Hopenhayen’s
terms, is “neither apocalyptic nor integrated” (Hopenhayn 2001, 46).
The contrast between the “before” and “after” is evident in a scene in
which the narrator remembers the building for the UNCTAD (The United
Nations Conference on Trade and Development). The building was con-
structed when the Popular Unity government was invited in 1971 to host the
conference, thus making it a site of collaborative mobilization and socialist
politics. In a colossal effort supported by thousands of volunteers, the site
was finished in less than one year. As Frank Mora observes, “The UNCTAD
 Unsettling Nostalgia in Roberto Brodsky’s Últimos días de la historia 65

in Santiago in 1971 ratified the policy of creating a wider international forum

in which developing countries would be able to formulate alternatives to the
hegemonic vision of the United States” (Mora 2003, 249). In April 1972,
Allende gave a compelling address in the building of the UNCTAD on trade,
debt, and economic development issues, in which he denounced the exploita-
tion of an unjust trade system and singled out the United States as perpetra-
tors of an, “unfair international division of labor, based on a dehumanized
concept of mankind” (Allende Gossens 2000, 25). Once the events con-
cluded, the building was to be administered by the Ministry of Public Educa-
tion and used for meetings to benefit the public. It was renamed the “Centro
Cultural Metropolitano Gabriela Mistral” [The Gabriela Mistral Metropolitan
Cultural Center] and became an active center for various artistic and cultural
activities for approximately one year. The building was a utopian space
created in concert with a conscientious plan to advance social justice and
cultural exchange. What the novel renders visible is the site’s transfiguration
after the coup into a bastion of the military regime. What readers cannot
envision based on the text is the change that would come after its publication.
During the presidential term of Michelle Bachelet (2006–2010 and
2014–2018), the building was once again transformed and finally inaugurat-
ed in 2010 as the Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral GAM devoted to dissemi-
nate and promote the performing arts and music.
In Últimos días, the narrator wistfully recalls his participation in the con-
struction of the building during the Allende years; “I enjoyed doing it. Rais-
ing that massive building with our own hands, working overtime day and
night, while Allende rallied us not to give up the battle, to double down and
stay vigilant, to organize and support the government” (Brodsky 2001, 56). 8
Twenty-five years later, as the protagonist passes the building he silently
thinks to himself, “I am glad that I participated in its construction. . . . That
building contains all the political experience that I have or of which I was
capable” (Brodsky 2001, 56–57). 9 According to Katherine Hite, for the Chi-
lean generation of the 1960s, “the most salient indicators of political identity
were their early experiences in national politics, experiences that seared their
memories and defined their political priorities and relationships to politics in
unique ways” (Hite 2000, xv). For Lalo, the touchstone of his political iden-
tity was this first experience, which remained in his memory and determined
his political commitments.
To Lalo’s disappointment, after the coup the building underwent radical
transformation and became a militarized site. Pinochet usurped Allende’s
position in the building, later renamed it after the conservative statesman
Diego Portales (1793–1837), and finally replaced the discourse of socialism
and collective solidarity with the discourse of capitalist enterprise and privat-
ization. After the return to democracy, the building remained in the hands of
the Ministry of Defense; however, in 2006, five years after the publication of
66 Chapter 1

Últimos días, a fire caused by the overheating of the electrical network se-
verely damaged the building. The destruction generated a debate about the
revamping of the structure to make way for a new center, including a theatre,
convention halls, and restaurants. As I mentioned, during Bachelet’s two
non-consecutive terms, the building was once again transformed and finally
inaugurated in 2010 as the GAM. While the reclamation of the building
attests to the political significance of the site and the social and political
changes in the country, any recovery seemed far from reach at the time that
Brodsky wrote Últimos días in 2001. The building had the potential to be a
site of memory, but the protagonist laments that no one seemed to remember
or care about its origins:

That building reveals the place that we occupy in history. That is what I shout
out when I am feeling enthusiastic, although my students don’t appreciate it
because nothing interests them less than the history of the construction of
UNCTAD, and how it was renamed Diego Portales and then Gabriela Mistral
and tomorrow who knows. Maybe they will decide to leave it in anonymity as
a synthesis of the last thirty years, the mirror of the country where I look at
myself without recognizing what I see. (Brodsky 2001, 57). 10

The building serves as both a physical vestige of Chile’s recent past and a
mirror in which the narrator sees his own reflection. This mournful rendering
of the building for the UNCTAD explores how memory and forgetting per-
meate public spaces and individuals. In his book Present Pasts (2003), An-
dreas Huyssen reads “cities and buildings as palimpsests of space” and
“monuments as transformable and transitory” (Huyssen 2003, 7). The trope
of the palimpsest is useful in my reading of this passage because what Brod-
sky underscores is that edifices and communal areas continue to be effaced in
Chile to make room for new meanings, but the multiple layers of the past
remain shrouded underneath. The narrator’s gaze back at the building once
again reminds us of Benjamin’s angel of history that looks to the past and
sees the mounting wreckage, yet a storm called “progress” inevitably drives
him towards the future.
Brodsky foregrounds the relationship between the dictatorship and the
transition to democracy by suggesting that the regime dismantled the Popular
Unity’s socialist project and silenced the opposition, whose voices and
counterhegemonic memories remain largely shut out because they challenge
the current discourse of political reconciliation. Brodsky seeks to vindicate
the memory of those spaces and individuals that continue to be marginalized.
The building for the UNCTAD becomes a space that produces both nostalgia
and melancholy in the narrator because it represents the depletion of a hope-
ful cultural milieu as well as the loss of the naiveté of his adolescence. While
he seeks to keep the building’s memory alive through a transgenerational
transmission to his students, they only express indifference. Brodsky’s ren-
 Unsettling Nostalgia in Roberto Brodsky’s Últimos días de la historia 67

dering of modern Chilean youth and the contemporary classroom experience

contrasts greatly with his representation of the utopian precoup classroom—
one that provided the protagonist with the opportunity for inspirational learn-
ing experiences.
During the years of the UP, Lalo learned that education could foster more
egalitarian forms of social organization based on democratic decision-mak-
ing and a commitment to the collective. These principles were taught to Lalo
by his high school teacher Nieves Croix, who lives in his memory sur-
rounded by the reverberations of her teachings. Along with Allende, she is a
larger-than-life figure of the Popular Unity years who invokes the imagery of
a heroine committed to political reform. She taught Social Studies comparing
the importance of Marx in the twentieth century with that of Jesus in ancient
Rome (Brodsky 2001, 100). Croix becomes a hagiographic character that
embodies courage and altruism. Her name significantly connotes purity
(Nieves) and martyrdom or crucifixion (Croix). Her character is reminiscent
of the real U.S. born priest Father Gerardo Whelan, who was the headmaster
of the integrated school St. George in Santiago from 1969–1973. Significant-
ly, Father Gerardo Whelan was the real figure from which Roberto Brodsky
and André s Wood modeled the character Father McEnroe in the film Machu-
ca (2004). In the original, the author frames the character as female, and in
doing so, recognizes the role women played in political mobilization and in
fostering the development of critical consciousness.
One of the most vivid memories of the protagonist’s teenage years is the
day that Croix brought the students to the settlement “Lo Hermida” on the far
west periphery of Santiago. The arrival at the shantytown made Chile’s un-
equal distribution of wealth and conflictive class relations sharply visible for
Lalo and his classmates. Walking among improvised dwellings made from
scrap plywood and corrugated metal was the protagonist’s first engagement
with settlement dwellers. He recalls how Croix enthusiastically told the class
as they returned to the bus that individual effort was not enough to overcome
poverty: “no single achievement could free this land of shantytowns, and for
that reason the people of Lo Hermida had no alternative but to organize
themselves and take poverty into their own hands, and that is the beginning
of the class struggle.” (Brodsky 2001, 102). 11 Lalo remembers that in an
epiphanic moment he realized that, “poverty was a curse, a stigma that
wasn’t merely washed away with good intentions, but rather by grinding it
against itself” (Brodsky 2001, 101–2). 12 The author frames the narrator’s
memories as a social awakening in which he begins to value Leftist ideals,
solidarity, and activism.
Here, Brodsky juxtaposes a bygone period of utopian desires with a cur-
rent period of apathy, moral decay, and disillusionment. Insofar as the author
emphasizes an irrevocable loss of the socialist project of the Unidad Popular,
the novel manifests a “restorative” nostalgic tendency. According to Svetlana
68 Chapter 1

Boym, restorative nostalgia focuses on an idea of truth and the return to

idealized origins: “Restorative nostalgia stresses nostos and attempts a trans-
historical reconstruction of the lost home” (Boym 2001, xviii). Restorative
nostalgia ruminates on the lost physical and spiritual home and depends on a
strong rhetoric of continuity with the historical past. Boym contends that this
type of nostalgia “builds on the sense of loss of community and cohesion and
offers a comforting script for individual longing” (Boym 2001, 42). Based on
the characterization of Nieves Croix, one might conclude that Brodsky is a
restorative nostalgic; however, such a conclusion would fail to take into
consideration the complexities of the entire novel, which reveal contrasting
types of nostalgia that often overlap, shift, and collide.
Numerous moments in the novel demonstrate a resistance to the romanti-
cizing character of restorative nostalgia. First, let us consider the character-
ization of the protagonist during the Popular Unity years. In a self-effacing
tone, the narrator admits that his own political dedication was minimal. “I
had trouble remembering the acronyms and knowing what the JAP, CUP,
JOTA, and FER corresponded to. The FER were the most revolutionary, the
ones with whom Toña’s group organized, raising their fists to the cry, “study,
fight, and win” (Brodsky 2001, 55). 13 While he could recite several stanzas
from the hymn of the Unidad Popular “El pueblo unido,” he confesses that
his commitment was limited to a few days of volunteer work with Cacho to
construct the building for the UNCTAD. This representation portrays Lalo as
a follower who ideologically transforms in relation to those around him due
to a longing for acceptance, prestige, and perhaps sexual advance.
In another representative scene, Toñ a offers Lalo the novel Palomita
blanca (1971), by Enrique Lafourcade expecting to later discuss with him the
class conflict as revealed through the plot and main characters. Enormously
popular in Chile at the time, the novel depicts a relationship between a
working-class young woman (María, Palomita) who falls in love with a
young man from the upper-class elite (Juan Carlos). As a means to impress
Toña, who becomes the focus of his sexual desire, he attempts to read the
novel. However, after skimming over the first few pages, he instead decides
to watch the Hollywood series “Run for Your Life” starring Ben Gazzara,
who significantly portrays a man with only a short time to live. The theme of
the series suggests that Lalo is aware of the gravity of the sociopolitical
situation in Chile in 1973, but he would rather remain uncommitted and even
ready to retreat. This characterization of the protagonist seeks to make visible
the often-guarded antiheroic stories of ambivalence and remorse. This vivid
example illustrates how the author encourages readers to gain a more nu-
anced understanding of the broad spectrum of actors and diverse experiences
in this complex historical moment.
 Unsettling Nostalgia in Roberto Brodsky’s Últimos días de la historia 69

LONGING FOR RESISTANCE

The protagonist’s flashbacks include emblematic memories of the coup, such

as the afternoon that he watched in horror as the flames scorched La Moneda.
“I felt an immobilizing sensation that has lasted until today, as if a mirror had
shattered, as if the TV screen were to break apart once again in the middle of
an episode of Combat and the shards shot around the room among suffoca-
tion and confusion” (Brodsky 2001, 87). 14 The symbolism of this catastroph-
ic version of events is striking: Lalo’s identity, as represented by the mirror,
was forever shattered by this experience of collective devastation. 15 As Lalo
listens to Allende’s final address to the Chilean people on Radio Magallanes,
he knows that Allende’s dream of large open promenades and the future of
free humankind was quickly becoming petrified. He laments that Allende
was already marble when they listened to him (Brodsky 2001, 91). The
marble image of Allende, and by extension, his promise, can be read as a
symbol of the fossilization of a dream.
This scene renders a traumatized individual that suffers damage to the
basic structures of the self due to experiences of fear, humiliation, helpless-
ness, and guilt. The stages of recovery, according to psychologist Judith
Herman, are establishing safety, reconstructing the story, making meaning of
the present in light of the past, and restoring the connection between survi-
vors and their community (Herman 1997, 3). In the novel, September 11
becomes a point of rupture that marks the beginning of a long process by
which the protagonist takes shelter in romanticized memories of the UP
while steering clear of the challenges that leftist communities faced after the
coup. Lalo remembers that immediately, Allende “transformed into an ideal,
that is, into something eternal that demanded to be considered without ambi-
guity” (Brodsky 2001, 91). 16 This is precisely the type of facile nostalgia that
Stuart Tannock, David Lowenthal, and Fredric Jameson criticize as a kind of
tranquilizer with debilitating consequences. According to Tannock, this type
of uncritical nostalgic “will inevitably gloss over contradictions or negative
components” of the past (Tannock 1995, 457). However, what is illuminating
is the way in which Brodsky underscores how nostalgic memories are con-
structed and narrated. That is to say, the author depicts a character whose
retrospective ruminations on the past reveal the process by which restorative
nostalgic memories tend to romanticize the past and construct a single, co-
herent, idealized plot. Therefore, by signaling the process, Brodsky makes
evident the coexistence of nostalgia, irony, and critical thought.
As literary critic Michael Lazzara points out, “One of the particularities of
exile is that it is often lived as a freezing in time. Even though life continues
in the country from which the individual was cast out, the patria is harbored
mentally as a snapshot of the past” (Lazzara 2009, 54). In the protagonist’s
case, this frozen record is full of exciting and romantic moments that he
70 Chapter 1

increasingly embellishes with time. Upon his departure for Buenos Aires in
1974, Lalo admits, “I became committed to the entertaining game of invent-
ing myself” (Brodsky 2001, 109). 17 Lalo fashions himself to his new Argen-
tine friends as a revolutionary intellectual that actively participated in the
utopian construction of “la Vía Chilena al Socialismo.” In the following,
Lalo creates a formulaic and overtly melodramatic image of yesteryear as an
inspirational ideal within the present:

I even gave myself a nickname for my revolutionary role, Palo Blanca, the
intellectual of the group, and such was the enthusiasm of my speech that
sometimes my listeners became electrified between proclamations and prom-
ises to prepare to liberate a piece of territory. All along, their voices raised,
echoing of the battle of Chacabuco, until we ended up standing on the tables,
singing in chorus: Chilean brother / do not lower the flag / we are here willing
to cross the mountain range. In front of the stoic waiters, who forgave us for
our drunkenness, we were euphoric and in love. (Brodsky 2001, 111) 18

Lalo’s restorative nostalgic discourse, both revolutionary and messianic, is

juxtaposed against his cowardly and hypocritical actions. The improvised
selection of the nickname Palo Blanca, a shortened version of Palomita Blan-
ca, is both revealing and comical. In this scene, Brodsky insightfully illus-
trates how restorative nostalgics can be both despairing sentimentalists and
disingenuous opportunists. Lalo’s residence in one of the most exclusive
neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, “La Recoleta,” epitomizes his hypocrisy. In
a guilt-ridden tone, the narrator admits that while he spent his afternoons in
posh cafes and tango bars such as “El Querandí” or “La Puerto Rico,” he
created a self-acclaiming myth:

I circulated my story from café to café, and very soon the city was transformed
into my den or, rather, my lecture hall. I got to know each of its corners as if it
were a lover, waking up in parks with black cigarette butts in my mouth,
divulging the details and combining their possibilities, narrating events, and
adding subtleties for the occasional attentive listener who was influenced by
the breaking news, which made my story even more essential and necessary
since darkness often overshadowed the incoming information. (Brodsky 2001,
113) 19

We might suggest that the narrator’s nostalgia is a logical response to a sense

of discontinuity. Tannock suggests that by returning in vision to lost pasts,
places, and peoples, the nostalgic subject “asserts a sense of continuity over
and above her sense of separation, and from this continuity may be able to
replenish a sense of self, of participation, of empowerment, belonging” (Tan-
nock 1995, 456). In this case, the narrator’s nostalgia allows him to establish
a sense of community, but it is superficial and fleeting. His championing of
the cause of the UP is ultimately self-righteous and opportunistic. It is a
 Unsettling Nostalgia in Roberto Brodsky’s Últimos días de la historia 71

means among other means (drinking, frequenting cafes) to an end, that of

self-fulfillment. Therefore, when Lalo returns to Chile, and his commitment
to the anti-Pinochet struggle is challenged, the outcome of that test comes as
no surprise. Rather than insert himself into a clandestine resistance move-
ment, he withdraws into silence and inaction, no longer emphasizing a false
version of a past. He assumes an ostensibly proper married life and, as I
stated, becomes a professor of prehistoric art. His focus on a distant past
bespeaks a desire to evade the chafed memories of a recent past.
The theme of false heroism is an important thread in the novel. The
protagonist houses a sense of guilt for his lack of a deeper engagement in the
resistance against the Pinochet regime. According to Herman, “Feelings of
guilt are especially severe when the survivor has been a witness to the suffer-
ing or death of other people. To be spared oneself, in the knowledge that
others have met a worse fate, creates a severe burden of conscience” (Her-
man 1997, 54). Years after returning from exile, Lalo realizes that his life had
been lived in denial and it is only a matter of time before he becomes
overwhelmed with a sense of self-loathing. This state of grief and revelation
is provoked by a variety of factors, namely the death of his father, the separa-
tion from his wife, middle age, and finally, the transition to democracy. It is
an emotional state in which he searches for traces of fulfillment but finds
none. His previous inspiring speeches in exile appear to have been devoid of
any true value. This crossroads in the narrator’s trajectory harks back to the
epigraph of Últimos días in which Brodsky cites Nunca llegará s a nada
(1961) by the Spanish author Juan Benet (1927–1993):

No doubt a day dawns when . . . the past emerges in a moment of uncertainty

to exorcise the evil and sordid past and bring back serenity. It ridicules and
disrupts the fragile and sterile, chimerical and unsatisfied condition of a tor-
tured and aimless present, eternally absorbed in the flight of a fly buzzing
around a green tulip. (Benet cited in Brodsky 2001, 9) 20

Both Últimos días and Nunca llegarás a nada revolve around protagonists
tormented by their past and by the experience of failure within the context of
dictatorship. The transatlantic comparison is significant. In both cases, mem-
ories surface involuntarily within the context of an unsatisfactory present.
However, in both cases, the authors do not emphasize the distance of the
past, but instead its perpetual return in the present. This pivotal moment in
Lalo’s life marks the beginning of his transformation in which he assumes a
nocturnal double-life. This transformation does not signal the culmination of
a moral defeat, but rather an urgency to convey an anti-hegemonic discourse
that highlights the ways in which the military coup impacted his life.
Lalo conceives of the sex machine through the discovery of the real
Hungarian author and inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734–1804), who
72 Chapter 1

created a false automated chess-playing machine in 1769 called “The Turk.”

Von Kempelen’s automaton reflected the dreams of living machines, consist-
ing of a life-sized model of a bearded Turkish man whose left arm held a
smoking pipe, while his right arm rested on the top of a large wooden box
and played the opponent. It was a facade since inside the box a human chess
expert controlled the machine and created the illusion that it was the Turk
who was competing. After the death of its inventor in 1804, the life-imitating
machine was sold to the Bavarian musician Johann Nepomuk Mä lzel, who
hired the chess player William Schlumberger to carry out the hoax from
within the box. In Lalo’s own words, the sex machine would be his partner
with whom he would journey through the corners of memory: “Travel the
towns and cities of memory . . . to represent my truth in history” (Brodsky
2001, 118). 21 Significantly, Benjamin commented on Von Kempelen’s me-
chanical device in his “Theses of the Philosophy of History.” In the first
thesis written in 1940, Benjamin uses the automaton as a metaphor: “One can
imagine a philosophical counterpart to this device. The puppet called ‘histor-
ical materialism’ is to win all the time. It can easily be a match for anyone if
it enlists the services of theology, which today, as we know, is wizened and
has to keep out of sight.” (Benjamin 1968, 253). In Benjamin’s metaphor,
theology’s faith (as opposed to secularism’s reason) is the cloaked force
behind historical materialism (the man-made automaton), which is framed to
be singlehandedly capable of winning the class struggle. Benjamin’s use of
The Turk could be read as a critique suggesting that despite Marxism’s
identification with scientific objectivity, historical materialism requires qua-
si-religious mechanisms or means to succeed. Benjamin’s metaphor might be
read as a rejection of historical materialism as illusory or even fraudulent;
however, in the book Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin's ‘On the Con-
cept of History’ the French-Brazilian Marxist sociologist and philosopher
Michael Löwy makes a convincing argument that “The use of quotation
marks and the way this is phrased suggest that this automaton is not ‘true’
historical materialism, but something that is given that name.” (2005, 25). 22
The allusion to Benjamin’s metaphor in Últimos días is provocative and
enigmatic. Insofar as the sex machine (Lalo’s Turk) explodes and symboli-
cally dies at the end of each show, we might imagine that Lalo’s show is a
parallel version of Brodsky’s narrative. It deconstructs grand narratives, un-
veiling their construction and illusory mechanisms. At the same time, it
mourns the loss of the match or the faith in a utopist revolution that would
radically reshape social relations. Lalo is an illusionist who exposes his
tricks, inviting his public into a partnership that disallows for the blind confu-
sion between the blemished reality and the grandiose myth. This interpreta-
tion dovetails well with Lalo’s description of the machine as the “Deus ex
machine,” but “rebajada” and “ensordecida” (“diminished” and “deafened”;
Brodsky 2001, 123). The “Deus ex machine” is a plot device that is unex-
 Unsettling Nostalgia in Roberto Brodsky’s Últimos días de la historia 73

pectedly introduced in a narrative and provides a tidy solution to a far more

complex problem to bring the story to a happy ending. If Lalo’s sex machine
is the subversive version of the “Deus ex machine,” then his robot is a device
that does not offer climatic resolutions, but rather, the antithesis. The explo-
sion of the false android, and by extension the performance’s decidedly
unhappy ending, allows Brodsky to express both a sense of disappointment
in the loss of the socialist revolution and a critique of the Concertació n’s
toothless effort to attain justice in the transition to democracy.
As I previously noted, Lalo’s performance of memory has a powerful
political message. However, it is evident that Brodsky intends this show,
which combines camp-style elements of theatricality and exaggeration, to be
viewed with a certain measure of humor. These elements of melodrama and
comedy serve to heighten the desperate search for new ways to talk about the
violence perpetrated by the regime. It is noteworthy that the protagonist’s use
of montage alludes, if not ironically, to Diamela Eltit’s conceptual perfor-
mance “Maipu” (1983), whereby the avant-garde artist projected her face
onto walls opposite a brothel in Santiago while she read an excerpt of her
most abstract novel Lumpé rica. The idea, similar to Lalo’s performance, was
to unsettle the public and bring them into a critical state of reflection. Aca-
demics lauded Eltit’s performance, but the wider public arguably misunder-
stood it. Through the “Maipu” allusion, Brodsky seems to self-consciously
comment on the extent to which the significance of Lalo’s project, and by
extension the entire novel, lies in its theoretical claims.

UNSETTLING NOSTALGIA FOR THE FUTURE

In a criticism of the dominant narrative of reconciliation in Chile, Frazier

argues, “Reconciliation in transitions to democracy is often understood as a
form of mourning in which ‘truth commissions’ document human rights
abuses of prior regimes so that the nation may confront and confirm its loss,
resign its pain, and move on” (Frazier 1999, 110). But, as Frazier subse-
quently suggests, perhaps moving on is an impossible endeavor, particularly
when justice has been denied. This is ultimately the question that Brodsky
poses to the reader at the end of the novel. In the penultimate scene, which
reconnects with the beginning of the novel, the coup’s long-lasting effects
becomes the topic of conversation when Cacho and Lalo are reunited. After
twenty-two years of separation, the friends engage in a discussion about the
past as they walk through Santiago’s deserted streets. Significantly, they stop
at “La Casa de Cena,” a bohemian restaurant located near the old building of
the UNCTAD. Returning from exile, Cacho finds himself in a different
Chile, one that inevitably perturbs him. Over the years, memory became for
Cacho what Steve Stern calls a “closed box,” or a “‘will to forget,’ a social
74 Chapter 1

agreement that some themes and some remembrances were so explosive—

conflictive and intractable—that little could be gained from a public opening
and airing of the contents inside” (Stern 2004, 89).
Nevertheless, Cacho’s visit confirms the persistence of memory. “Return-
ing to Santiago meant exposing himself to a regression, and it was evident
that he regretted it . . . despite the twenty-something years since the Costa
family left, Cacho wasn’t able to close that door swinging open behind him”
(Brodsky 2001, 132). 23 Through the juxtaposition of these characters, Brod-
sky attempts to say something about the laborious nature of overcoming
trauma and loss. As they leave the restaurant, Lalo suddenly needs to vomit,
which symbolizes his inability to digest the painful memories evoked by the
encounter. The novel ends with a somber image of the protagonist alone and
disillusioned. He contemplates whether or not he should return to the bar in
search of old incurable wounds. He concludes that returning is inevitable;
“That would be my test or my debt, although at that moment another night of
farewells seemed impossible” (Brodsky 2001, 147). 24 The sorrow that he
transmits causes us to reflect on the unresolved and uncalculatable grief
produced by the injustices of the regime.
In 2017, sixteen years after its original publication through the small press
Ojo por Ojo, Últimos días was republished in Mexico by Rialta. The republi-
cation of the novel points to its potential to prompt readers to think in new
ways about memory and, as I see it, to conceptualize unsettling nostalgia as a
response to the Pinochet aftermath. I agree with Jameson who recognizes the
value of nostalgia in his essay “Walter Benjamin; or, Nostalgia” in Marxism
and Form. “There is no reason why nostalgia conscious of itself, a lucid and
remorseless dissatisfaction with the present on the grounds of some remem-
bered plenitude, cannot furnish as adequate a revolutionary stimulus as any
other: the example of Benjamin is there to prove it” (Jameson 1971, 82). To
my mind, the same could be said of Roberto Brodsky, whose form of self-
conscious “unsettling nostalgia” is compelling because it does not remain
trapped in immobilizing ruminations on bygone days. Rather, it forces us to
question the governmental and societal move towards reconciliation and clo-
sure to a conflict that is not “settled.” Unsettling nostalgia bears the unre-
solved tensions and the contradictions that are worth conserving insofar as
they provoke further discussion about the questions at stake. These questions
involve the dangers of both forgetting the systematic repression of the Pino-
chet regime as well as endorsing the current neoliberal political-economic
and social model that the regime implemented and ruthlessly upheld.

NOTES

1. An earlier version of this chapter was published in 2011 in Chasqui 40 no. 2, 108–24.
 Unsettling Nostalgia in Roberto Brodsky’s Últimos días de la historia 75

2. In 2006, during the last year of his six-year term, Lagos granted monetary compensation
to victims of torture under the Pinochet regime. They were identified in the 2004 Valech
Report, which contained information on execution, detention, and torture during the dictator-
ship. These events, which followed Pinochet’s 1998 arrest, marked a turning point. Charges
brought against ex-DINA agents and former soldiers significantly increased. In May 2008, one
hundred former soldiers and secret police officers were arrested for human rights abuses during
the dictatorship.
3. The scope of Hopenhayen’s book is wide-reaching, including all of Latin America;
however, the author often refers specifically to the case of Chile.
4. I was introduced to this Benjaminian concept through Cecilia Enjuto Rangel. See the
chapter “The Spanish Civil War: A Transatlantic Vision” in her book Cities in Ruins: The
Politics of Modern Poetics.
5. “Es cierto que algunos son directamente homos y otras buscan un clima bi, pero la
mayoría no son nada; gente que ha perdido el viaje y lleva la retirada como una injusticia
marcada en las caras, un voto de contrición voluntaria que no conoce la revancha, ni la
necesitan ya, porque en su sombría sabiduría reconocen que han sobrevivido a la historia así
como están. Tipos que no guerrean ni vociferan más allá del perecible entusiasmo con el que
aúllan en el local” (Brodsky 2001, 126). All translations of Roberto Brodsky’s work are my
own.
6. “me considero un artista, le dije, alguien que interpreta para los demás, también un
pedagogo. . . . la decadencia de nuestra percepción es lo que me motiva. Mi show no es más que
eso: una bola de cristal vuelta hacia el pasado” (Brodsky 2001, 123).
7. “una dislocación del tiempo, su división en un antes y un después separados a completo
beneficio del presente, que ahora se inclinaba sin matices bajo el signo de la conquista supre-
ma” (Brodsky 2001, 97).
8. “Me gustó hacerlo. Levantar ese enorme edificio con las manos, día y noche en horarios
de triple jornada, mientras Allende nos arengaba a no cejar en la batalla, a redoblar la vigilan-
cia, a organizarnos y apoyar al gobierno” (Brodsky 2001, 56).
9. “Me alegro de haber participado en su construcción. . . . Ese edificio contiene toda la
experiencia política de la que soy o fui capaz” (Brodsky 2001, 56-57).
10. “Ese edificio es una lección del lugar que ocupan los hombres en la historia, suelto en
voz alta cuando me entusiasmo, aunque mis alumnos no lo aprovechan porque nada les interesa
menos que la historia de la construcción de la UNCTAD, y de cómo pasó a llamarse Diego
Portales y luego Gabriela Mistral y mañana quién sabe; quizá́ decidan dejarla en el anonimato
como una síntesis de los últimos treinta años, el espejo de la patria donde yo me miro sin que se
note lo que miro” (Brodsky 2001, 57).
11. “ningún fruto solitario redimiría esa tierra de callampas crecidas, y por eso en Lo
Hermida no tenían otra salida que organizarse y tomar la pobreza entre sus propias manos, y
éste era el principio de la lucha entre las clases” (Brodsky 2001, 102).
12. “la pobreza era una maldición, un estigma que no salía ni se lavaba con buenas inten-
ciones sino frotándola contra sí misma” (Brodsky 2001, 101–2).
13. “mi preparación revolucionaria era escasa. Me costaba retener las siglas y saber a qué
correspondían las Jap, el Cup, la Jota y el Fer—que eran los más revolucionarios, y donde
militaban todos los del grupo de Toñ a, levantando el puño al grito de ‘estudiar, luchar y
vencer’” (Brodsky 2001, 55). Note the following: JAP: Junta de Abastecimiento y Precios;
CUP: Comité s de Unidad Popular; La Jota: Chile’s Communist Party Youth Organization;
FER: Frente de Estudiantes Revolucionarios; CUT: Central Ú nica de Trabajadores; MAPU:
Movimiento de Acció n Popular Unitaria; MIR: Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria.
14. “Tuve entonces una sensación inmovilizante, de espejo roto que ha perdurado hasta hoy,
como si la pantalla del televisor volviera a trizarse en medio de un capítulo de Combate y las
esquirlas salpicaran la sala entre el ahogo y la confusión” (Brodsky 2001, 87).
15. In a 2001 interview, Brodsky stated, “La dictadura ya se zampó mi juventud con un
largo toque de queda (y) el Estado me castigó todo lo que pudo” (Angélica Rivera 16 May
2001). Brodsky, who was approximately fifteen years of age at the time of the coup, later lived
in exile in Venezuela, Argentina, and Spain. During the UP government, he was a young
76 Chapter 1

militant in the FER. After his return to Chile in the early 1980s he worked as a journalist and
became involved in clandestine oppositional press networks.
16. Allende “se transformaba en un ideal, es decir en algo eterno que exigía ser considerado
sin ambigüedad” (Brodsky 2001, 91).
17. “me entregué al gracioso juego de inventarme a mí mismo” (“I became committed to the
entertaining game of inventing myself”; Brodsky 2001, 109).
18. “Hasta me puse un sobrenombre para mi papel revolucionario, Palo Blanca, el intelectu-
al del grupo, y era tal el entusiasmo de mi lengua que en ocasiones mis oyentes se agitaban
entre proclamas y promesa de alistarse para librar un pedazo del territorio, mientras las voces se
alzaban con ecos de la batalla de Chacabuco y terminábamos todos subidos arriba de las mesas
y cantando a coro: hermano chileno/ no bajes la bandera/ que aquí́ estamos dispuestos a cruzar
la cordillera, eufóricos y enamorados ante la impasibilidad de los mozos que nos perdonaban la
embriaguez” (Brodsky 2001, 111).
19. “Paseaba mi argumento de confitería en confitería, y muy pronto la ciudad se transformó
en mi madriguera o, mejor dicho, en mi locutorio; conocí cada uno de sus rincones como si de
una amante se tratara, amaneciendo en las plazoletas y en los parques con un pucho negro en la
boca, develado por los detalles y combinando sus posibilidades, narrando sucesos y agregando
datos que mis ocasionales oyentes escuchaban con el oído atento, influidos por las noticias de
los diarios que volvían mi relato más imprescindible y necesario a medida que la tiniebla
ensombrecía las informaciones que llegaban” (Brodsky 2001, 113).
20. “Sin duda amanece un día en que . . . emerge el pasado en un momento de incertidumbre
para exorcizar el tiempo maligno y sórdido y volver a traer la serenidad, ridiculizando y
desbaratando la frágil y estéril, quimérica e insatisfecha condición de un presente torturado y
andarín, eternamente absorto en el vuelo de una mosca en torno a una tulipa verde” (Benet cited
in Brodsky 2001, 9).
21. “recorrer los pueblos y ciudades de la memoria . . . para representar mi verdad en la
historia” (Brodsky 2001, 118).
22. See Michael Löwy, 2005, Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin's “On the Concept of
History”. New York: Verso, 25.
23. “Regresar a Santiago era exponerse a una recaída, y era evidente que lo lamentaba . . . a
pesar de los veintitantos años transcurridos desde que los Costa se marcharan todavía Cacho no
se resolvía a clausurar la puerta que batía a sus espaldas” (Brodsky 2001, 132).
24. “Esa sería también mi prueba o mi pago, aunque en ese momento me parecía imposible
otra noche más de despedida” (Brodsky 2001, 147).
 Chapter Two

Memories of Motherhood and

Militancy in Chile
Gender and Nostalgia in Calle Santa Fe by Carmen
Castillo

Unlike the visible mechanisms of gender hierarchies and militarized mascu-

linity that characterized the Pinochet’s regime’s right-wing ideology
(1973–1990), the features of gender politics on the left in Chile have been
arguably more complex and diverse. During the Allende period (1970–1973)
leftist women mobilized in large numbers to demand economic justice and to
champion the struggles of disenfranchised groups, including women, work-
ers, and cultural minorities. 1 After the military coup, many of these women
protested against state-sponsored human rights violations sanctioned by the
regime, and some even participated in clandestine operations to overthrow
the dictatorship. Active engagement in leftist resistance movements such as
the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) or the Frente Patriótico
Manuel Rodríguez (FPMR) seemed to open a window for Chilean women to
enter into spaces that had been entirely male-dominated and to participate in
what they saw as pivotal historical change.
As we know, however, heterosexual white men have controlled most
leftist organizations and political parties in Chile, and they have had an
uneven record on women’s rights (Friedman 2010, 285). As Gina Herrmann
illustrates in “Voices of the Vanquished: Leftist Women and the Spanish
Civil War,” that was also the case in Spain: “the social conservatism of the
left circumscribed, to varying degrees, the potential for female political agen-
cy (2003, 15). In the abstract, leftist militant groups in both Spain and Chile
upheld a far-reaching revolutionary platform encompassing the emancipation
77
78 Chapter 2

of women, but insofar as they considered the struggle for gender equality as
subordinate to the class struggle, their ideologies remained fundamentally
patriarchal. In practice, this meant that organizations like the MIR in Chile
ended up maintaining, albeit inadvertently, conventional gender norms and,
by extension, hindering a more comprehensive move towards female em-
powerment. Juan Duchesne Winter highlights this incongruity in his recent
study of Latin American revolutionary culture La guerrilla narrada (2010),
indicating that women rarely held high-ranking positions within militant
movements, and those that did often faced entrenched paternalistic attitudes
and behaviors (Duchesne Winter 2010, 213). 2 Consequently, women in-
volved in the anti-Pinochet resistance arguably contended with a dual chal-
lenge: to fight against the misogynist violence of the right-wing military
junta, and additionally to deal with the paradoxes concerning gender among
the parties of the left.
In the wake of dictatorial violence in Chile, and Latin America more
broadly, the artistic and academic grounds on which the questions of political
legacies have been debated are wide-ranging. But, to various degrees, there
has been little place for the topic of women, motherhood, and militancy. That
is to say, writers and filmmakers have represented a variety of topoi common
to post-dictatorial culture, but the perspective of female militants has largely
remained on the margins of discourse. As journalist Cherie Zalaquett argues
in her book, Chilenas en armas (2009), women’s participation in revolution-
ary politics has been rendered invisible in the majority of historical, cultural
and sociological studies. Perhaps the most iconic feminine image in the
context of Latin American dictatorships is of the Mothers of the Plaza de
Mayo who, despite their brave campaign to end human rights abuses in
Argentina and to demand accountability, have often been cast as the victims
of human rights violations rather than historical agents. How, then, can we
account for the multiple experiences of women in the landscape of Latin
American politics? What might we gain from an attentive reflection on the
intersections of subject formations and social relationships and the affective
complexities and contradictions that arise from them?
In the Southern Cone, a modest number of historians, social scientists,
journalists, and survivors have recently sought to answer these questions,
producing a pioneering corpus of socio-historical examinations of women’s
political participation (Zalaquett, Jelin, Franco, Bunster-Burotto, Baldéz,
Franceschet, Mooney, Richard, Shayne, Friedman, Llanos, Segato) and testi-
monies that give voice to the personal experiences of women in militant
movements (Diana, Castillo). While this collection of studies offers valuable
insight into women’s political involvement, the complexity of the gendered
politics of social revolution and resistance calls for new areas of research and
debates addressing not only the achievements and limitations of reach of
leftist women, but also how they remember and represent their own struggles
 Memories of Motherhood and Militancy in Chile 79

in the post-dictatorship. By paying attention to the gendered dimensions of

political resistance in cultural production such as film, literature, and testimo-
ny produced by women and about women, we might complicate appeals to a
univocal masculinist and heteronormative narrative of the anti-Pinochet re-
sistance. Such investigation, by extension, contributes to the interdisciplinary
dialogue among the humanities and social sciences on the meanings and
memories of revolution and dictatorship in contemporary Latin America and
Spain.
The primary goal of this chapter is to address the complexities and hetero-
geneities of representations of memories of militant women who played a
role in political struggles during and after the Allende years. I will deal
specifically with the autobiographical film Calle Santa Fe (2008) by Carmen
Castillo (b. 1945) and ask how Castillo (director and protagonist) depicts the
lingering recollections of her participation in Chile’s effort to implement
democratic-socialist change, as well as the traumatic memories of political
persecution. To my mind, the film constitutes a striking example of an unset-
tling nostalgic reflection on the period that raises new questions about the
multiple meanings of the dictatorial past and how the intersections of gender
and revolution have shaped such meanings.
My reading of the film thus pushes the conversation beyond the notion of
an unproductive nostalgia for a singular distant past to a conception of gener-
ative nostalgia that contributes to a creative understanding of the ties joining
past and present. This framework opens up a dialogue not only about the
extent to which organizations like the MIR struggled to move past the gen-
dered structures of a patriarchal society but also the clash between the tempo-
ralities and affective structures of militancy and post-dictatorial memory.
Whereas Castillo-the-militant prioritized political convictions over mater-
nity, the memorialist-director questions these priorities in the present, thus
ostensibly re-asserting the gendered role of motherhood that militancy
seemed to challenge. In my estimation, however, this temporal disjuncture
does not signal a mere retreat to the patriarchal model, but rather an attempt
to engender a political genealogy that might at once contribute to the process
of mourning and animate history for future collective goals. Castillo-the-
memorialist grapples with the emotional reaction to unmourned loss and
disenchantment, both individual and collective, through a search for mean-
ingful intergenerational bonds and life storytelling practices performed
through what Sidonie Smith calls the memorial relationality of parent-child
relationships (Smith 2011b, 8). The film thus gives us insight into recent
historical processes in Chile marked by the intersections of gender and poli-
tics, and additionally demonstrates that the narration of life stories through a
critical nostalgic lens in the aftermath of dictatorial violence has the potential
to provide what Smith calls an occasion for “assembling and claiming iden-
tities” and “negotiating affective attachments” (Smith 2011a, 565).
80 Chapter 2

AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO NOSTALGIA AND

POSTDICTATORIAL DOCUMENTARY FILM

Calle Santa Fe is a first-person autobiographical film directed by and featur-

ing a former revolutionary militant who was forced into political exile during
Pinochet’s military dictatorship. More specifically, the documentary probes
Castillo’s involvement in the MIR and her truncated relationship with the
movement’s leader, Miguel Enríquez. Some viewers will recall that the
group emerged from student organizations in 1965 and gained support
among shantytowns and trade unions in Santiago. While the MIR largely
supported the Popular Unity government, the group advocated a far more
radical model of revolution to end labor exploitation, class hierarchies, and
neoliberal imperialist policies. Although the film features the testimonies of
both men and women, this essay focuses on women’s voices and particularly
the stories of Margarita Marchi (MIR militant, detained and tortured in 1975,
exiled in 1976, returned clandestinely to Chile in 1980), Macarena Aguiló
(daughter of Margarita Marchi and filmmaker) and Carmen Castillo (MIR
militant, exiled in 1976). 3
As the film recalls through archival footage, after the 1973 coup, the
military insurrectionists systematically dismantled the democratic state, im-
plemented a far-reaching neoliberal economic agenda, and brutally repressed
all leftwing opposition. Militants from every leftist party were persecuted,
but the regime’s first priority was the MIR, which had sworn to resist mili-
tary rule at all costs. Between the years 1973 and 1977, eight hundred MIR
militants were disappeared or killed. Enríquez and Castillo were forced into
hiding, as they became primary targets for the regime. On October 5, 1974,
special agents located them in a safe house and engaged them in a two-hour
gun battle. Meanwhile, a neighbor contacted an ambulance, which arrived
shortly after the special operatives had pulled the unconscious and pregnant
Castillo out of the house and into the street. Enríquez died at the scene, but
Castillo survived. Their two young daughters, Javiera and Camila, were safe
in the Italian Embassy on the day of the attack. After recovering in a local
hospital, Castillo went into political exile in Paris where she still lives today.
The film follows her on her emotional return to the house on Santa Fe Street
where she interviews witnesses, former revolutionaries, family members, and
the neighbor that saved her life.
Instead of reading this documentary for its objective “truths,” I approach
it similarly to the way that I would approach a memoir—as a subjective
account created through the selection and arrangement of memories into a
narrative form that manifests the fluctuating ideological and emotional posi-
tions of the author. In Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life
Narratives, Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson emphasize “the intersubjective
exchange between narrator and reader aimed at producing a shared under-
 Memories of Motherhood and Militancy in Chile 81

standing of the meaning of a life” (Smith and Watson 2001, 13). Their point
is that autobiography constructs and bestows meaning on memories. This
concept of life narrative additionally allows for an emphasis on the shifting
politics of memory and the ways in which the construction of memory is
rooted in larger processes of cultural negotiation. As sociologist Elizabeth
Jelin suggests, memories are not simply stored away intact in a memory
depository, but rather part of subjective processes embedded in networks of
institutions, groups, and cultures in the present (Jelin 2003, 10). Calle Santa
Fe cinematographically stages this understanding of memory by performing
the filmmaker’s state of mind, which lingers between nostalgic memories of
resistance and ambivalent views concerning women’s political protagonism,
motherhood, and return. Castillo deals with such contentious issues by ex-
ploring, rather than obscuring, the emotional charge of one’s personal experi-
ence.
As I explained in the introduction to this book, nostalgic longing can take
many forms. Castillo’s film renders visible an unsettling nostalgia. It com-
bines what Boym calls “restorative nostalgia”, or an idealizing discourse that
seeks to mend the incongruities of memory with a “reflective nostalgia”, one
that displays the silences and complexities of memories and their difficult
narration in the present (2001, xviii). The film begins with an overtly ideal-
ized picture of the resistance that soon becomes more complicated as Castillo
delves further into the uncomfortable zones of memory. Through dialogues
and voiceovers, Castillo cross-examines her own assumptions, and in doing
so, transforms simple nostalgic recollections into a thought-provoking por-
trayal. In what follows, I will focus on how strategies, such as dialogue,
montage, and framing highlight these different nostalgic modes and make the
documentary form a compelling medium for understanding the critical and
gendered dimensions of nostalgic longing as well as the relationship between
the emotional, the historical, the political, and the cultural, and how these
interpellate the present.

LONGING FOR RESISTANCE

IN CALLE SANTA FE

Calle Santa Fe is both an elaboration and reevaluation of the testimonial

texts and films that Castillo produced while in exile, namely Un día de
octubre en Santiago (1980) La Flaca Alejandra (1993), and Santiago-París:
El vuelo de la memoria (2002). What distinguishes Calle Santa Fe from
these previous works is its focus on Castillo’s return home and her nostalgic
longing to salvage remnants from the past. With its self-conscious style, I
characterize the film as a hybrid documentary form, combining elements of
the essay-film, the historical documentary, and the autobiographical film. It
82 Chapter 2

is constructed from interviews, a poetic narrative, creative reenactments, and

archival footage. These strategies allow Castillo to highlight the contradic-
tions and limitations of memory, and by extension, to raise important issues
about the relationship between memory, history, and representation. Equally
important is the way in which Castillo draws from the essay-film genre to the
extent that the voiceover and framing contain a political-essayistic discourse
about the violence of the regime and its legacy. For Phillip Lopate an essay
film “tracks a person’s thoughts as he or she tries to work out some mental
knot, however various its strands” (Lopate 1996, 246). Hybridity, thus, char-
acterizes Castillo's documentary form and the type of nostalgia conveyed in
the film.
As noted, the film begins with a restorative nostalgic rendering of 1974
insofar as it recasts the past in an overtly idealized form in contrast with the
dystopian present. Castillo’s wistful memories of an exciting, revolutionary
period seem to block out or ignore the complexities of her gendered experi-
ence that she later poignantly underscores. A description of the opening
three-minute segment will illustrate my point. A brief synopsis of the events
of 1973 is followed by black and white newsreel footage that spotlights a
suited journalist announcing breaking news—the detection and murder of
Miguel Enríquez and the capture of Carmen Castillo.
The safe house, where the crime took place, crackles onto the screen. La
Calle Santa Fe, which significantly means Holy Faith Street, becomes a
mythical space in the public sphere. For the regime’s champions, it was a site
of victory over communist terrorists; however, for the regime’s opponents, it
was a brutal site of conquest. The melancholic tone of the violin and flute
resonates while the archival footage cuts to an image in the present. A high-
angle shot captures from above an image of Castillo sifting through old
photos, political pamphlets, and letters. This frame foreshadows her ensuing
re-examination of the past and her chafed memories of resistance and defeat.
Following this high-angle shot, a fluid, contemplative camera glides
across a wooden floor, which has several symbolic objects strewn over it,
including a child’s stuffed animal and several books by José Martí and other
intellectuals and revolutionaries. These emblems of lost innocence and ideal-
ism are set in a room with an open window through which light and breeze
gently enter through a white curtain. In a voiceover, we hear the coarse, yet
tender sound of Castillo’s voice.

I don’t have to try to remember the beauty of his face on the day of his death. It
is not Miguel who has left. It is I who has become a stranger in this story. I
spent only ten months in that house on Santa Fe Street; and yet all that I could
hope for in a lifetime, I lived there. Perhaps that is happiness. Living every
minute as if it were the last. Threats and fear stayed outside. After passing
through the door, we regained life. The space of the house is filled with music,
tangos, Beethoven, aromas from the kitchen and children’s games. Miguel
 Memories of Motherhood and Militancy in Chile 83

Figure 2.1. Castillo over an archive of photos and documents. Screenshot tak-
en from Calle Santa Fe.

works, writes by hand, and I type. He whirls around, speaking at full speed.
Night falls, he reads stories to our girls, laughter, and dancing. The time is
there. It does not proceed. I just had to get used to the absence, the emptiness
to one day dare to approach the house, which has been embedded in me since
that Saturday, October 5, 1974. Yes, it all started in that house—the break with
my country and the heartbreaking uprooting of an adventurous family. (All
translations are my own) 4

This film sequence, with its poetic arrangement of images, music, and prose,
effectively aestheticizes restorative nostalgia. According to Boym restorative
nostalgia attempts to recover the past intact, to “rebuild the mythical place
called home” (Boym 2001, 50). As if to return to that time, Castillo shifts her
verb tense from the preterit to the present mid-way through when she says,
“After passing through the door, we regained life. The space of the house is
filled with music.” The narrative follows her in her mind as she attempts to
travel back in time. We should recall that the word nostalgia combines the
Greek “nostos,” meaning homecoming, with algos, meaning pain or longing.
Through idealized allusions to kitchen aromas and children’s games, Castillo
bespeaks her longing to return home, to a glorified domestic space. However,
her emphasis on mutual exchange of ideas and intellectual activity suggests
that for Castillo this idyllic space was not a separate sphere for women, but
rather a utopian site where both parents were able to fulfill nurturing roles
while simultaneously engaging in political activism. Her fixation on the res-
84 Chapter 2

toration of the home can, therefore, be read as a manifestation of her longing

to mend the painful ruptures that halted the full realization of that utopian
dream.
Furthermore, this scene suggests that for the survivors, feelings of loss
and regret accumulate over the years and generate (or are generated by) both
a sense of disillusionment with the present and a longing to preserve the
memories of social activism and community that appear to be lacking in the
twenty-first century. Remembering Miguel thus serves as an antidote to a
sense of disenchantment in Castillo’s present. Significantly, the backdrop of
the film soon becomes the city of Santiago in the post-dictatorial present. The
rage against the economic and social inequalities that fueled mass political
participation in the 1960s and 1970s appears to be absent in present-day
Santiago. In the background, we catch a glimpse of a McDonald’s restaurant
(maximum symbol of globalization and neoliberalism) and a large political
campaign advertisement for the right-wing politician and business tycoon
Sebastián Piñera. Some viewers will recall that over the 1990s Piñera owned
Chilevisión (a major media outlet) and publicly supported former officials of
the Pinochet regime for office. Of course, he strongly opposed Pinochet’s
arrest and detention in 1998. Fast forward to 2008, when Calle Santa Fe was
first released, and Piñera was a major political candidate despite widespread
public knowledge of numerous scandals including dirty business dealings
and political corruption. Two years later, after Michele Bachelet’s first term
in office, Piñera would win the presidential election with the Renovación
Nacional, thus ensuring the continuation of the neoliberal political-economic
model that the Pinochet regime implemented and ruthlessly upheld
(2010–2014). He would later win a second presidential election in 2018.
In a voiceover accompanying this image of present-day Santiago, Castillo
explains that instead of encountering “home,” she encounters the arrogance
of the victors, the impunity of the criminals and general amnesia. Through a
montage of archival footage, Castillo soon juxtaposes a current period of
apathy, individualism, and consumerism with a bygone period of utopian
desires. Castillo’s mournful lament for the fallen militants of the MIR com-
bines with an appeal to the recovery of their memory in the present. She
insists, “It cannot be true that we are once again in Santiago, as if all that we
went through never happened, as if our dead never existed.” 5 The soundtrack
then cuts to the vibrant strumming of an acoustic guitar, which blends seam-
lessly with an archival clip that spotlights MIR militants marching in the
streets during the Allende period.
As a response to what she views as widespread historical amnesia, Castil-
lo considers the prospect of buying back the safe house to transform it into a
museum—one that would restore the memory of Miguel and honor the suf-
fering of the MIR. In a poignant close-up, the film captures Castillo’s grand-
 Memories of Motherhood and Militancy in Chile 85

daughter outside of the home chipping away the paint from the exterior wall
as if searching for something underneath.
This scene recalls Patricio Guzmán’s documentary Salvador Allende
(2004), which like Calle Santa Fe bespeaks what Idelber Avelar calls in his
study of post-dictatorial fiction “an estranged, denaturalized relation” to the
present, as if “trapped between the imperative of memory and the general
inability to imagine an alternative future” (Avelar 1999, 10). As Michael
Lazzara points out in his essay on Chilean documentary film, Guzmán zooms
in on a wall from which a small bit of paint has been scratched away. “Facing
this wall covered by a metaphorical layer of forgetfulness (literally, paint),
Guzmán remembers that on the very same wall the Ramona Parra Brigade
once painted a mural to honor Allende” (Lazzara 2012, 74). 6 The imagery of
the encrusted wall can be read in both films as a site of ruins which Guzmán
and Castillo long to excavate, thereby exposing and giving meaning to the
Allende years in the aftermath of the dictatorship.
If we conclude that Castillo mythologizes the anti-Pinochet resistance and
seeks to enshrine Miguel’s memory and their revolutionary project in the
house, the film manifests a textbook example of restorative nostalgia. As I
already suggested, however, the film does not simply idealize the past, but
instead foregrounds its unsettling complexities and the intersections of gen-
der and politics that affect them. I agree with Nelly Richard, who contends
that one of the film’s greatest achievements is how Castillo brings to the fore

Figure 2.2. Castillo’s granddaughter near the safe house on Calle Santa Fe.
Screenshot taken from Calle Santa Fe.
86 Chapter 2

the oscillations amid uncomfortable “in between” zones; zones that alternate
between yesterday and today in order to disturb the comfortable discourse of
memory that remains focused on the linear transmission of a distant histori-
cal memory (Richard 2010, 138). Richard underscores how the film is pro-
foundly interrogative by nature instead of prescriptive precisely because it
exposes cracks that defy a unified account that relieves the pain of the di-
vided self (Richard 2010, 158). She contends that women introduce dissonant
voices of the anti-hegemonic “other” into the uniform discourse of the male-
dominated radical left. This is also an argument that Bernardita Llanos makes
in her article “Subjetividad y memoria en Calle Santa Fe de Carmen Castil-
lo” (2013). For Richard, Castillo’s inclusion of uncomfortable memories
linked to gender is a “corrugation” that acts as an anti-dogmatic resource that
cracks the mold of absolute truths of party membership (Richard 2010,
160–61). In the pages that follow, I expand on these interpretations by offer-
ing a close analysis of the film’s aesthetic framing of the uneasy and gen-
dered questions that “trouble myths of legacy, confound self-understandings,
and reroute personal narratives” (Smith 2011a, 566). I trace the critical di-
mensions of nostalgia through an analysis of how the film frames the inter-
sections of politics and gender.

MOTHERHOOD AND MILITANCY: UNSETTLING NOSTALGIA

IN CALLE SANTA FE

Although Castillo does not explicitly engage the debates over women’s rights
in Chile or women’s roles within a male-dominated political movement, she
includes important moments of self-reflection that shed light on how gender
and politics interact. In my estimation, the most interesting element that adds
a reflective dimension to the film is Castillo’s exploration of the politics of
motherhood. In The Politics of Motherhood: Maternity and Women’s Rights
in Twentieth-Century Chile, Pieper Mooney suggests that “the social con-
struction of women’s roles, as mothers and individuals, lies at the heart of
gender systems” and therefore “the lens of motherhood offers revealing new
insights into specific histories of women’s rights” (Mooney 2009, 3). Castil-
lo’s testimony along with the numerous interviews with politically engaged
women who had children either before or during the dictatorship offer an
important window to read through the construction of female subjectivity in
a period of political activism, exile and clandestine activity. Here, I would
like to draw on Gina Herrmann’s insightful oral history project about women
participants in the anti-Franco resistance in Spain. According to Herrmann, it
is the intersection of politics and maternity that complicates the life narra-
tives of politically active women. Herrmann’s oral history project on anti-
fascist movements in the Spanish Civil War has been extremely helpful in
 Memories of Motherhood and Militancy in Chile 87

my analysis, a fact that reiterates the potential of a transatlantic feminist

approach to doing post-dictatorial memory studies. In Herrmann’s oral histo-
ry project, she encounters two patterns similar to what we find in the case of
Chile:

The first tended to reveal a structure that borrows from storytelling templates
informed specifically by the oral culture of popular songs and poems that
heroicize the revolutionary proletariat fighter model which operates as an
internalized plot. . . . The second, more fragmented story appears to be the
result of an antagonistic relationship between politics and domesticity, and
between militarism and motherhood. . . . It follows then, that the confusion,
disjuncture, pain, and eventual absence of agency that these women experi-
enced in the postwar would play out in oral narratives often characterized by
fragmentation, circularity, or the loss of linear plotting. (Herrmann 2003, 19)

Expanding on Herrmann’s insights, I suggest that the interviews that fore-

ground the relationship between motherhood and political activism in Calle
Santa Fe complicate what might otherwise be considered an uncritical nos-
talgic homage to the resistance fighters of the MIR. To demonstrate this
point, I would like to turn to the interview with Margarita Marchi, a former
MIR member who was detained in 1975, tortured and forced into political
exile in 1976 then returned clandestinely to Chile in 1978. The narrative form
of the first segment of the interview can be characterized as a coherent, linear
reconstruction, even when she is asked about her detention and torture in
1975. Although Marchi does not say so directly, we know that within the
context of political persecution, women’s bodies became sites for male domi-
nance and violence. In her provocative testimony El infierno (1993), Luz
Arce describes in excruciating detail the dehumanizing sexual abuse that she
experienced at the hands of the hypermasculine secret police, which ulti-
mately led her to a life of betrayal. Similar to Gladys Díaz (MIR leader,
detained and tortured in 1975 and exiled in 1977), Marchi refused to collabo-
rate under torture; however, on-screen she avoids such dark memories and
instead nostalgically recalls her equal standing with men in the underground
resistance that began operations in Chile in 1978. The plan was called
“Operación Retorno,” and it involved clandestine re-entry in Pinochet’s
Chile to overthrow the regime. Participants were required to temporarily
leave their children with families abroad, namely in Cuba. What is most
striking about Marchi’s narrative is the way that it falls apart precisely when
Castillo asks her about her role as a militant and mother.

Margarita Marchi: The idea was to recover, and in that recovery, the call was
for all who wanted to be a part of it. That did not only involve men, but also
women.
Castillo: But how is it possible that we had children? You had to leave
Maca . . .
88 Chapter 2

Marchi: (Long pause) . . . Well, what do you mean? We had children . . . I

think that . . . ultimately, we chose life and having children is that, right? It is
to live, to project oneself, to give meaning to life. And . . . I don’t know. . . .
my experience in that . . . In the case of Macarena, it is super painful . . . It has
been very hard for me . . . very hard . . . to accept it even today. It is something
that is not . . . it was not an act, um . . . that is to say, um . . . how could I
explain this to you . . . we were simply facing the moment and justifying it at
that time, but it was a decision that has always had its price.
Castillo: What? What decision?
Marchi: Leaving . . . um, um . . . not being with Macarena. 7

Visibly staggered by Castillo’s emphasis on the gendered nature of their

experience as mothers and militants, Marchi struggles to articulate her deci-
sions and their lasting consequences. This derailment exposes deeper anxie-
ties rooted not only in the Chilean context but in a broader global political
arena, over a woman’s role in masculinized leftist movements. Although
Marchi appears to have attained a sense of peace from the intergenerational
bonds that she ultimately established with her children (as we later see in the
film), the anxiety that previously colored her understanding of a mother’s
role in a militant movement is reenacted in her testimony. It is de-centered
and marked by the erosion of coherence. The lucid temporal sequencing and
enthusiastic—uncritical—nostalgia that characterizes the first part of her nar-
rative suddenly abrades once she is asked to address her role as both a
militant and mother.
It is also important to note that this scene frames Marchi with a mirror in
the background reflecting Castillo’s image as if she were questioning herself.
It is my sense that Castillo’s probing questions bespeak her own desire to
come to terms with a past fraught with uncertainty and guilt. Throughout the
film, she mines personal memories of motherhood and militancy in emotion-
al sketches and vignettes. Perhaps the most harrowing memory involves
Castillo’s hospitalization after the ambush, which she visually animates
through a creative reenactment that differs from the film’s primary use of
archival film material and contemporary interviews. In this intimate evoca-
tion, Castillo blurs images from an emergency room to stage the afterlife of
traumatic moments caused by the secret police that ultimately led to the loss
of her pregnancy. She uses a hand-held camera, changes in camera level,
lighting effects, and color enhancement to reconstruct the episode—so jar-
ring that it requires alternative forms of representation.
As opposed to the compulsive reenactment that Dominic LaCapra has
theorized as “acting out” (LaCapra 2001, 143–44), I read this audiovisual
presentation as a conscious attempt to “work through” this particularly pain-
ful and gendered recollection. Archival clips then take us back to Castillo’s
years in exile when she grappled not only with the physical and psychologi-
cal trauma of having lost her partner and pregnancy, but also with the rela-
 Memories of Motherhood and Militancy in Chile 89

Figure 2.3. Margarita Marchi and Carmen Castillo. Screenshot taken from Calle
Santa Fe.

tionship between political struggle and traditional gender roles. In what

seems to be a confession, Castillo recalls her inability to manage her involve-
ment in resistance networks and motherhood in tandem. The film then shifts
to the present. As the camera frames her looking at children’s paintings and
black and white photographs, she ruminates on her decision to send her six-
year-old daughter to Havana, Cuba, for what would become a decade-long
separation. The soundtrack that accompanies the scene is a Cuban son that
grows faint as the camera zooms in on the old letters. The music fades to
silence, and the voiceover becomes a channel through which Castillo com-
municates her sorrow and regret to her daughter.

Since my life was no longer at risk, I could dedicate it to activist work.

Testifying to the violence consumed me, I was no longer able to be a mother.
In 1977, I let Camilla leave for Havana. She was six years old and embraced
an old rag doll. You did not return to my side, Camilla, until the day of your
seventeenth birthday. You grew up writing me letters every night to ward off
the distance. I responded by evading you, feeling compelled to avoid my
obligations in order to find again, if only for a moment, the dream of my life as
a woman and militant. 8

In Castillo’s attempt to represent the emotional torment of political persecu-

tion and resistance, she necessarily represents the complexities of female
subjectivity. From my point of view, the film does not seek to rectify the past
90 Chapter 2

through definitive justifications, nor conversely offer an apology. Instead, it

stimulates a broad reflection on the difficult negotiations that women have
made between motherhood and political commitments in times of dictator-
ship and how these negotiations remain unresolved today. These scarcely
discussed experiences attest to the pervasiveness, even among progressive
groups, of ingrained beliefs about ideal womanhood as essentially self- sacri-
ficing and suited more for the private than public sphere. Significantly, ques-
tions concerning the difficult task of balancing politics and parenthood are
not asked of the male interviewees in the film, which signals internalized
views about care work and women’s roles. While Castillo fails to confront
this gender imbalance among a radical leftist group directly, the film’s inclu-
sion of uncomfortable questions unmasks the multiple challenges that Chi-
lean women have faced as political actors and mothers compared to their
male counterparts. By drawing attention to the theme of motherhood, the
film at once encourages a reflection on the shortcomings of radical leftist
movements and beckons us to search for what Tamara Spira calls “a foothold
from which we might imagine deeper forms of radical justice” (Spira 2011,
173).
To this point, I have argued that the unresolved tension between politics
and motherhood reveals Calle Santa Fe’s unsettling nostalgic character. The
film begins with a remarkably restorative nostalgic scene then effectively
problematizes this type of nostalgia by calling attention to the charged si-
lences related to memories of maternity and resistance. Through the presen-
tation of these memories, the film does not merely idealize the past, but
rather engages what Jelin calls the arduous labors of memory (Jelin 2003, 5).
The film further implores us to consider memories of motherhood and mili-
tancy by featuring interviews with the daughters of militant mothers. In one
revealing scene, Castillo sits on a park bench with an unnamed woman who
as a child was sent to live in a commune called “Proyecto Hogares” in Cuba
with sixty other children when her parents participated in “Operación Retor-
no.” The scene opens with the sound of a carnival and an image of a street
vendor with children’s toys—an appropriate introduction to the ensuing di-
alogue that foregrounds the child’s perspective. As the carnival music fades
into a soft accompaniment, the film faces head-on the problems with which
the daughters of militant mothers have grappled:

MIR daughter: I suffered so much . . . for many years. So very, very much. I
had a lot of hatred towards my mother and father. I could not understand . . .
and in a very particular way I could never understand why my mother left us. I
could never forgive her for it.
Castillo: What did you understand about your mother? And about us? Because
my case is the same. It is the same case of many militant mothers.
MIR daughter: Yes... well, I still I cannot . . . I mean, it’s . . . phew . . . now I
understand now . . . now . . . now . . . now . . . that is, now I understand and I
 Memories of Motherhood and Militancy in Chile 91

understand her position and what she wanted to do, but unconsciously I cannot
overcome it. I cannot overcome it . . . that is, it is something that still makes
me cry . . . it is still the first punch that I throw at her when we argue, the first
point that I bring out against her. For a long time I thought that was the biggest
mistake of the MIR, but it’s complicated because I have very mixed memo-
ries . . . Project Homes was a project . . . it was a very beautiful project because
we were all children together and there was a very special feeling that we
shared . . . but, at the same time, there was a great sorrow that we felt for being
abandoned and for always feeling . . . always being considered second. 9

Here, the daughter’s attempt to see the mother-daughter relationship within

the broader context of the Latin American political struggle is evident, but
judgment rooted in gender prevails. It hinders what could otherwise be an
empathetic bond between mother and daughter through loss and survival.
This illustration has important consequences for the larger debate about revo-
lutionary culture in Latin America and Spain, suggesting that militant moth-
ers, in contrast with fathers, have been judged and judge themselves in terms
of their ability to care for the family. Such narratives bring nuance to Castil-
lo’s initial nostalgic ruminations on the MIR’s efforts to create a utopian
future. They move beyond simplistic categories that reduce women to hero-
ines or victims.
Following this scene Castillo returns to her own family’s story, explain-
ing that her daughters remain silent: “They are silent, and I accept that
silence. We never could have imagined that we did so much harm.” 10 On one
hand, the pangs of remorse that fuel Castillo’s confession can be read as a
reassertion of the “essential” gender role that militancy sought to undermine.
On the other, the types of questions that she asks herself can be understood as
a productive challenge that forces us to think about how militant women
struggle to make sense of their sacrifices within the patriarchal structures of
the present wherein political engagement and its demands continue to be
deeply gendered. The perspective of the filmmaker thus becomes what Sido-
nie Smith calls “a nodal point of a collective consciousness” that goes be-
yond the kinds of stories typically mobilized, and by extension requires a
new “ethics of receiving and reading” (Smith 2011b, 7–9).
This type of ethics is elegantly modeled within the film through an inter-
view with Macarena Aguiló (Margarita Marchi’s daughter). She leaves be-
hind blame and accusation, revealing an empathetic response to memories of
a dislocated past. The difference between the two daughters’ narratives calls
for a consideration of possible reasons. Both daughters form part of the same
generation of children of militants that experienced the effects of the dictator-
ship in their youth. Now, as adults, they must piece together the story by
listening to their parents’ accounts and blending them with their own. While
the former daughter seems to have deep-seated misgivings about remember-
ing, Aguiló shows a commitment to memory by participating in com-
92 Chapter 2

memorative events and producing films that elaborate and disseminate new
narratives. First, she appears filming a memorial event for the MIR and later
editing film footage and discussing her own documentary El edificio de los
Chilenos (2010), which chronicles the challenges that she faced over a four-
year period in the commune “Proyecto Hogares.” 11 For me, these scenes
illustrate an intimate relationship between empathy and reflective engage-
ment with memory.
Similar to her mother’s testimony, Aguiló’s narrative becomes disjointed
and inarticulate once she discusses familial relationships, displaying for
viewers lingering emotional fractures. At the same time, the interview dem-
onstrates that the mother-daughter relationship, based on empathy and a
shared commitment to understanding the past, might contribute to a sense of
identity as well as a capacity for caring attachment to communities. Aguiló
attests to the value of storytelling and storylistening to the extent that her life
has been enriched through the incorporation of the legacies of other people’s
lives into her own (Smith 2011a, 566).
Significantly, the next scene features Aguiló engaged in a dialogue with
mothers and daughters attempting to articulate the love and loss that charac-
terize the relationships between women and political causes in Chile. One
MIR militant involved in “Operación Retorno” breaks into tears as she re-
calls her own daughter’s continued resentment towards her for having re-
turned to Chile clandestinely. Her broken narrative also communicates an
eye-opening account of the gendered structures of the MIR, which limited
women’s power in the decision-making process and discouraged the discus-
sion of private matters in the public sphere. Militant mothers, she protests,
were denied a space to collectively weigh their options and converse about
their sorrow and common concerns about their roles as political agents and
mothers. By calling attention to the ethical dilemma that militant women
faced involving impossible choices between moral imperatives, the film ren-
ders visible the ways in which leftwing militancies reproduced the inequal-
ities of the broader masculinized culture. Gender is thus located at the heart
of both remembrance and dissidence. Mothers become the narrators of resis-
tance stories of which their daughters become bearers; however, these resis-
tance stories do not merely glorify a heroic past, but rather point to the
difficult gendered negotiations between politics and parenting with which
militant women have grappled.
These segments shed new light on the broader domain of post-dictatorial
memory in Latin America and offer viewers a productive framework to think
about the past. By spotlighting the exchange between mothers and daughters,
the film suggests that transgenerational communication of memory contrib-
utes to both the healing process and the creation of solidarity in the present.
Both Castillo and Aguiló insert themselves into a larger “culture of memory”
which, as Jelin points out, is “in part a response or reaction to rapid change
 Memories of Motherhood and Militancy in Chile 93

and to a life without anchors or roots” (Jelin, 2003, 1). In such a cultural
climate, Jelin contends, “memory has a highly significant role as a symbolic
mechanism that helps strengthen the sense of belonging to groups or commu-
nities.” (Jelin 2003, 1–2). At the same time, the film suggests that transgener-
ational communication of memory must involve reciprocity, or a mutually
beneficial exchange between generations based on a dialogue about the
meaning and uses of memories in the present. This point is exemplified in a
scene towards the end that frames Castillo listening to a young man who
insists that memories of resistance must be meaningful today. 12
Significantly, the film’s final scenes spotlight Castillo inquiring about
grassroots movements and observing a hip-hop group conveying a rallying
call for social activism. The band’s last words “Lucha, vamos” (“Fight, let’s
go”) are followed by a long shot of Castillo and Aguiló facing the safe house
with their backs against the same wall from which Castillo’s granddaughter
had scraped off a layer of paint. This shot conveys a powerful metaphor—
Castillo’s longing to restore the home intact is behind her and ahead lies the
aspiration to combine memories of the MIR with a commitment to the
present. She resolves to have several plaques cemented into the sidewalk
outside the safe house that at once mourn the death of Miguel and vindicate
his memory for the future: “Live Miguel and die, grow as a red shadow, as a
free-floating messenger.” 13 The memorial speech given at the site by the
MIR militant Renard Betancourt blends with Castillo’s elegy: “Every defeat

Figure 2.4. Carmen Castillo and Macarena Aguiló facing the safe house.
Screenshot taken from Calle Santa Fe.
94 Chapter 2

holds within it a heaven to be gained. The ghostly hour has arrived, unex-
pectedly and suddenly, in which we will take back the streets and carry forth
a new and old dream, reinventing our spirit and our smile.” 14
These scenes resist what James E. Young considers the limitations of
monumentalization characterized by an inclination to keep the past at a dis-
tance. In his study of Holocaust memorials, Young fears that “instead of
searing memory and arousing public consciousness, conventional memorials
seal memory off from awareness altogether” (Young 2004, 278). Calle Santa
Fe shows opposition to this trend by provoking an important consideration of
the unresolved conflicts that politically active women in Chile have faced
and how the remembrance and communication of such disputes can be useful
in the present. Castillo creates a space for the contemplation of family trau-
ma, and in doing so, her film becomes not only a compelling essayistic
historical re-examination of the past, but more broadly a film about critically
engaging memory in the present. The film finds its strength not through two-
dimensional idealizations of resistance fighters, but rather through a nuanced
rendering of the emotional landscapes of mothers and daughters whose sto-
ries bring out the complexities of historical processes while calling into ques-
tion the gendered assumptions that shape them. This documentary thus plays
a small but significant role in presenting alternative approaches for imagining
the past in Chile that inspire new thinking and enrich historical awareness of
the complex and gendered structures of post-dictatorial memories.

NOTES

1. An earlier version of this chapter was published in 2012 in Journal of Latin American
Cultural Studies 21 no. 1 (2012): 15–36.
2. Duchesne Winter’s book deals in broad terms with the narration of the Latin American
guerrilla. Particularly useful for this chapter is his interview with Chique Ramírez whose
memoir, titled La guerra de los 36 años: Vista con ojos de mujer de izquierda (2001), offers a
critical perspective of her involvement in the guerrilla in Central America as a militant indige-
nous woman. In the interview, Duchesne Winter asks how women’s experiences in the guerrilla
were different from men’s. Drawing from personal experience, she explains that women suf-
fered greatly from sexism, marginalization, and objectification (213).
3. In the article, “Modes of Silence and Resistance: Chilean Documentary and Gendered
Torture” (2016), I explore the nostalgic narrative of Gladys Díaz as conveyed in Calle Santa
Fe. In this present chapter, I chose to center on Margarita Marchi and her daughter Macarena
Aguiló because they best exemplify how the critical and gendered dimensions of nostalgia
shape familial bonds. The film also features Lucía Sepúlveda (MIR leader, clandestine between
1973 and 1989), Gladys Díaz (MIR leader, detained and tortured in 1975, exiled in 1977,
returned in 1990), Erica Hennings-Chanfreau (MIR militant, detained and tortured in 1974,
exiled in 1976, returned in 1983), María Emilia Marchi (MIR militant, arrested and tortured in
1974, exiled in 1975, clandestine return in 1979, detained in Brazil in 1989, transferred to Chile
in 1999, freed in 2000), Maria Cristina Pacheco (MIR militant, left clandestinely in 1978,
returned in 1984).
4. “No me hace falta recordar la belleza de su rostro el día de su muerte. Miguel no se ha
ido. Soy yo quien me he convertido en otra. Una extraña de esta historia. Y sin embargo diez
meses de vida en la casa de la calle Santa Fe y todo lo que uno puede esperar a lo largo de una
 Memories of Motherhood and Militancy in Chile 95

vida, allí lo viví. Quizá será eso la felicidad. Cada minuto vivido como si fuera el último. La
amenaza, el miedo, se quedaban afuera. Después de atravesar la puerta recobrábamos el aliento.
El espacio de la casa se llena de música, de tangos, Beethoven, Cittá Rosa. De olores de cocina
y de juegos infantiles. Miguel trabaja, escribe a mano, y yo tecleo, se voltea, habla a toda
velocidad. Cae la noche, les lee cuentos a nuestras niñas, risas y bailes. El tiempo está allí, no
transcurre. Solo tuve que acostumbrarme a la ausencia, al vacío para osar un día acercarme a la
casa. Esa casa incrustada en mí desde ese sábado cinco de octubre 1974. Sí, todo empezó en esa
casa. El rompimiento con mi país, el desgarramiento de una familia a las andanzas.”
5. “No es verdad que podamos estar de nuevo en Santiago como si todo lo vivido no
hubiese sucedido, como si nuestros muertos no existieran”
6. Lazzara offers a lucid comparison of Patricio Guzmán’s Salvador Allende, Carmen
Castillo’s Calle Santa Fe, and Miguel Littín’s Compañero presidente. See “Remembering
Revolution after Ruin and Genocide: On Recent Chilean Documentary Films and the Writing
of History” (2012).
7. Margarita Marchi: La idea era recuperar, y en esa recuperación, la convocatoria era para
todos los que queríamos ser parte de eso. Y en eso de ser “parte de eso,” no solamente había
hombres, sino también había mujeres. Castillo: Pero ¿cómo es posible que hayamos tenido
hijos? Tú tuviste que dejar a la Maca . . .
Marchi: . . . O sea, ¿cómo es posible que hayamos tenido hijos? . . . yo creo que . . . en
definitiva nosotros lo que hemos hecho es optar por la vida y tener hijos es eso, ¿no? Es vivir,
es proyectarse, es vivir . . . o sea es . . . tener un sentido de vida. Y . . . no sé . . . yo . . . mi
experiencia en eso son . . . en el caso de Macarena es súper doloroso, eh . . . me ha costado . . .
bastante asumirlo hasta el día de hoy, ya es algo que no es . . . no fue una acción . . . em . . . es
decir, em . . . como podría explicarte . . . que solamente fue enfrentar un momento y justificar
un momento y eso, sino que fue una decisión que ha tenido siempre costo, ¿ya?
Castillo: ¿Cual? ¿Cuál decisión?
Marchi: El dejar a la . . . el . . . el . . . no estar con la Macarena . . .
8. Puesto que ya no ponía en riesgo mi vida, podía dedicarla al trabajo militante. Testimo-
niar sin descanso, ya no conseguía ser madre. En 1977 dejé que Camila se fuera a La Habana.
Tenía 6 años y abrazaba a una vieja muñeca de trapo. No regresaste a mi lado, Camila, hasta el
día de tus 17 años. Creciste escribiéndome cada noche cartas para conjurar la distancia. Yo
respondía esquivando, arrastrada por esa necesidad de navegar lejos de las obligaciones, para
reencontrar, aunque fuera por un momento la ilusión de una vida de mujer y de militante.
9. MIR daughter: Es que yo sufrí mucho . . . durante muchos años por eso. Mucho, mucho,
mucho. Tenía mucho odio por mi mamá y mi papá por eso. No podía entender . . . y de una
manera muy especial nunca podía entender por qué mi mamá nos dejara. Nunca se lo podía
perdonar. Castillo: ¿Qué comprendiste de tu madre? ¿De nosotras? Porque es el mismo caso
mío, el mismo caso de tantas militantes.
MIR daughter: Sí . . . es que todavía no puedo . . . o sea, es, ufffv . . . Ahora la entiendo,
ahora, ahora, ahora, ahora, o sea, ahora la entiendo y entiendo su postura y lo que quiso hacer,
pero inconscientemente en mí no lo puedo superar. No lo puedo superar . . . o sea, es algo que
todavía me hace llorar . . . es algo que todavía es la primera . . . cuando discuto con ella es el
primer dardo, el primer punto que yo saco contra ella es eso. Yo por mucho tiempo pensé que
fue el gran error del MIR, eh, pero es complicado porque tengo recuerdos muy encontrados . . .
eh.. el Proyecto Hogares era un . . . era un proyecto muy bonito porque estábamos todos los
niños juntos, y había una onda muy especial de estar todos juntos y compartir todo juntos . . .
pero a la vez había una pena muy grande por el abandono y siempre sentir . . . siempre ser
considerados como los segundos de la historia.
10. “Ellas callan, y yo me inclino ante este silencio. Nunca hubiéramos podido imaginar que
hicimos tanto mal.”
11. See the 2010 documentary film The Chilean Building by Macarena Aguiló.
12. Also see Michael Lazzara’s analysis of Calle Santa Fe in “Remembering Revolution
after Ruin and Genocide” (2012) and “Guzmán’s Allende” (2009).
13. “Vivir Miguel morir, crecer como sombra roja, flotando libre mensajera.”
96 Chapter 2

14. “Pero toda derrota contiene su cielo por ganar. Porque ha comenzado inesperada, súbita
la hora fantasma donde volveremos a ganar las calles y el territorio, de una nueva y vieja
ilusión, reinventando el ánimo y la sonrisa.”
 Chapter Three

Unsettling the Archive

De monstruos y faldas by Carolina Astudillo

To define what I term “unsettling nostalgia” is to trace its sources in a dual

longing. It emerges from a desire to salvage compelling stories of revolution-
ary struggle to enchant the disenchanted present. At the same time, it springs
from a need to historicize and confront the complex factors and unresolved
conflicts, dilemmas, and contradictions that have shaped such struggles.
These two inclinations appear to be incompatible, but the previous two chap-
ters illustrate how they might coexist in post-dictatorial literature and film.
While unsettling nostalgia has not emerged as a widespread phenomenon, it
may be characterized as a cultural current that unfolds on screen and the
page, and that prompts viewers and readers to regard the past anew. As the
previous chapter explains, films like Calle Santa Fe contribute to our under-
standing of the ways in which women involved in the anti-Pinochet under-
ground often contended with a twofold challenge: to fight against the misog-
ynist violence of the right-wing military junta, and additionally to deal with
the paradoxes concerning gender among the parties of the left. The film
complicates romantic idealizations of leftist militants by creating a disquiet-
ing nostalgic portrait of mothers and daughters whose memories bring out
the gendered dimensions of political resistance.
When we turn to the case of Spain in search of documentaries that chal-
lenge us to think about the complexities of women’s participation in the
Spanish Civil War and the anti-Franco underground, several films stand out.
Some examples include De toda la vida (1986) by Lisa Berger and Carol
Mazer, Mujeres en pie de guerra (2004) by Susana Koska, Las silenciadas
(2011) by Pablo Ces, Guillena 1937 (2013) by Mariano Agudo, and La
madre sola (2010) by Miguel Paredes. Particularly salient, and relevant to
97
98 Chapter 3

this book, are the feature and short documentaries of the Barcelona-based
Chilean filmmaker Carolina Astudillo for their atypical representation of the
intersections of gender, politics, and clandestine resistance in the Spanish
postwar period.
Born in 1975, Astudillo spent her childhood under the Pinochet regime
and came of age at a time when military intervention was still framed in the
official discourse as the most viable response to political conflict. During the
1990s, Astudillo studied journalism at the University of Santiago and experi-
enced the transition to democracy as a young adult. Given the militarized
climate of surveillance and patriarchal control in which she spent her adoles-
cence, it is unsurprising that she found striking parallels between the Spanish
and Chilean dictatorships. In the 2000s, she moved to Catalonia to study non-
fiction film and began her career with a twenty-four-minute piece called De
monstruos y faldas (2008) for the master’s program in creative documentary
at the Universitat Antónoma de Barcelona. As a poetic film without a single
scripted voice of authority or plotline, Astudillo’s point of view is implicit.
The voice of the documentary speaks to us through the juxtaposition of
1940s-era footage with the perspectives of four grown children of women
political prisoners as a way to understand responses to the structures of
violence integral to the Franco regime. For its stunning vision of women’s
resistance to an entire network of patriarchal institutions and practices in
postwar Spain, De monstruos y faldas will be the focus of this chapter.
Astudillo conveys that vision through experimental cinematic practices that
markedly depart from conventional methods.
To contextualize the short film and to lay the foundation for my argument
that frames Astudillo’s unsettling nostalgia as a political act that exposes the
conditions that shape repression and resistance, we must first place it within
the cultural milieu in which it was produced. Astudillo’s narrative position as
a filmmaker developed against the backdrop of collective disenchantment
with the shortcomings of the transitional governments in both Chile and
Spain to generate deeper forms of social justice and post-dictatorial redress.
Her films also bespeak the shared interest among a younger generation of
Chilean and Spanish filmmakers in recovering untold stories of the pre-
dictatorial pasts and the massive mobilizations that characterized them. Im-
portantly, these were periods that they never experienced directly as adults.
As Alice Nelson correctly argues, the sense of disenchantment for those who
lived through the Allende years as young adults and those who only knew
militarized society is significantly different: “If the older generation had
loved and lost in its experience with the Popular Unity, the younger genera-
tion never had loved at all. As Popular Unity had by the 1980s become part
of a mythical past (gone the way of other large or totalizing narratives), the
older generation felt bitter loss of having once believed in collective myths,
while the younger generation simply yearned to believe- despite cynicism- in
 Unsettling the Archive 99

the possibility of telling stories at all” (Nelson 2002: 119). Although Nelson
does not say so directly, her reflection contributes to a larger discussion
involving “postmemory.”
While the introduction to this book has already rehearsed the key argu-
ments about postmemory put forth originally by Holocaust scholars and then
expanded by numerous Latin Americanists and Peninsularists, it is useful to
return to Hirsch’s canonical text Family Frames to consider how Astudillo’s
documentaries bring complexity to our understanding of postmemory. The
term refers to the memories of a generation of children who have come of
age in the wake of mass atrocity crimes and have experienced the effects of
state violence in relation to their parents and grandparents. Hirsch defines
postmemory as “a very particular form of memory precisely because its
connection to its object or source is mediated not through recollection but
through imaginative investment and creation” (Hirsch 1997, 22). Hirsch dis-
cusses the stakes of this mediated and creative process in her most recent
elaboration of the paradigm-shifting concept, asking, “What do we owe the
victims? How can we best carry their stories forward, without appropriating
them, without unduly calling attention to ourselves and without, in turn,
having our own stories displaced by them?” (Hirsch 2012, 2).
The value of the generational framework is significant insofar as it pro-
vides a vocabulary to contribute to an “evolving ethical and theoretical dis-
cussion about the workings of trauma, memory, and intergenerational acts of
transfer” (Hirsch 2012, 2). But as with any generation or period, we must be
cautious of categorical or prescriptive definitions. I agree with Fredric Jame-
son, who suggests that period concepts and generational logic are classifica-
tory systems that often seek a totality that does not entirely reflect the hetero-
geneity of experience (Jameson 2003, 229). In the case of Chile and Spain,
the postmemory (or postdictatorship) generation spans over decades. How
might the experience of those who were born during the Allende years differ
from those born in the context of the 1989 plebiscite? The same could be
asked in the Spanish context if we take, for instance, those born in the 1950s,
1960s, or 1970s, all unique generations that nevertheless fit under the rubric
of postmemory. If we narrow the scope to the generation of Spanish or
Chilean filmmakers born around the 1970s, we find a number of noteworthy
examples of recent documentaries, including El edificio de los Chilenos
(2010) by Macarena Aguiló, Mi vida con Carlos (2010) by Germán Berger-
Hertz, Muerte en el Valle (2005) by C.M. Hardt, De monstruos y faldas
(2008) and El gran vuelo (2014) by Carolina Astudillo. These films, among
others, constitute not only powerful denunciations of right-wing authoritarian
practices but also vehicles to reclaim a collective identity against the milita-
ristic, patriarchal, and nationalist ideology of the regimes.
Astudillo’s eye-catching cinematic form of storytelling, combined with
the feminist lens with which she examines dictatorial violence, make her
100 Chapter 3

documentaries exceptionally relevant to this book. Unlike the other filmmak-

ers listed above, Astudillo moves away from the reflexive and performative
modes that explicitly focus on the filmmakers’ point of view through on-
screen introspection and self-questioning. That is not to say that the other
modes are less valuable or relevant. As the previous chapter explains, Car-
men Castillo adopts reflexive and performative strategies in Calle Santa Fe
to convey an unsettling nostalgia. Astudillo, on the other hand, brings togeth-
er the expository and poetic modes by re-contextualizing found and archival
footage. De monstruos y faldas reflects the filmmaker’s influences, namely
the French documentarian Chris Marker whose cinematic collage Grin With-
out A Cat (1978) rejects traditional film formulas to grapple with the strug-
gles of the New Left after 1968 in Latin American and Europe. Innovative in
her own right, Astudillo combines archival sequences with b-roll video of
symbolic images, animation, and expressive sound to reanimate the past and
to inspire viewers to break through dominant perspectives of the Spanish
Civil War and postwar. 1 I examine De monstruos y faldas in this book
alongside the previous chapter on Castillo’s Calle Santa Fe to enable a
thought-provoking comparative reflection on different cinematic manifesta-
tions of unsettling nostalgia.
The inclusion of Astudillo’s documentaries in this book also stems from
an understanding of the significance of both her transatlantic trajectory and
Janus-like critical lens that focuses on the past and present in Spain and Chile
alike. Her cutting-edge engagement with the histories of the Pinochet and
Franco regimes profoundly resonates with the broader claims in Unsettling
Nostalgia, which underscore the political, historical, cultural, and artistic
connections between these two contexts. Although Astudillo’s films deal
with each separately, they share key thematic threads that reveal her knowl-
edge of the relationships between movements in 1930s Spain and early 1970s
Chile to end institutionalized inequality. They also show her grasp of the
network of gendered ideologies that have informed dictatorial violence in
both areas. Viewed together, her documentaries encourage us to think of
these political systems within a wider connective framework populated by
actors that have exercised repressive policies on one hand, and those who
have contested them on the other.
If Astudillo’s films have only received scant attention, this chapter shows
that it is not due to a lack of originality or significance. Film scholar Laia
Quílez Esteve has blazed the trail, offering a perceptive analysis of Astudil-
lo’s work, claiming that she “recovers distant images, turning them into
essays about the complicated situation of women during the war and the
post-war period in Spain through the process of enlargement, fragmentation
and even the alteration of their original speed, thus re-signifying them” (83).
Whereas Quílez Esteve focuses primarily on El gran vuelo to show how
Astudillo denounces the roles, spaces, and images imposed by patriarchal
 Unsettling the Archive 101

society, this chapter focuses on how De monstruos y faldas adopts an unset-

tling nostalgic perspective to portray women who defied such prescriptive
gender roles.
In what follows, I will first illustrate the cinematic strategies that Astudil-
lo uses to acknowledge the particularities of women’s experiences at Les
Corts Women’s Prison in postwar Barcelona in relation to a longer history of
gender socialization, social policing, and misogyny. In the second section of
this chapter, I will give examples of how nostalgic memories of meaningful,
exciting, and brave acts of defiance sit alongside anti-nostalgic revelations
involving the long-term consequences of political imprisonment and imposed
familial fragmentation. Through the composition of archival sequences to-
gether with the music, sounds, and disembodied voices of the interviewees
that accompany the shots, De monstruos y faldas moves beyond reductive
representations of women as merely passive victims stripped of personhood.
By transmitting an unsettling nostalgic vision of women as active and com-
plex political subjects, De monstruos y faldas transforms masculinist narra-
tives that diminish women’s agency. Astudillo responds to the atrocities of
the Franco regime by prompting viewers to confront systems of violence and
to consider how those systems have been challenged. Viewers are faced with
stories of degradation and trauma experienced by women and their children,
but we are also exposed to stories of resilience and courage. De monstruos y
faldas thus changes the way we conceptualize state violence and ultimately
sharpens our often-dulled analytical skills, thereby moving us toward a more
nuanced understanding of gender, violence, resistance, and nostalgia.

SEWING MACHINES, SKIRTS, RIFLES AND MONSTERS

Adeptly conceptualized and edited, the first sequence combines b-roll visual
material in color with found and archival black and white footage to capture
the audience without verbal commentary. Astudillo pulls viewers in with a
tight close-up shot of the key parts of a 1940s era sewing machine: the
needle, the bobbin, the pressure controlling knobs and the metal wheel. The
heavy and rhythmic sound of the piercing needle is critical, bringing the
antique sewing machine to life while building tension around this highly
symbolic device. The visual b-roll material of the sewing machine in full
color is then juxtaposed with a black and white image of another gendered
symbol: a gun. Archival footage of the Spanish Civil War features a man
firing a rifle out of a window. Between the shots of the sewing machine and
the shot of the gun is a woman jumping off a high dive into deep water
followed by an image of an explosion. The combination of these images is
redolent of the history of women’s bold and risky submersion in revolution-
ary politics. The jump is accentuated by the sound of a jagged and repetitive
102 Chapter 3

melodic piece played on the viola, which is soon accompanied by a low pitch
cello. The viola suggests ongoing anxiety while the deeper sound of the cello
captures a feeling of sustained dread. These four sounds merge evocatively
with footage of war-torn Spain curated to specifically focus attention on
women and children witnessing violence and fleeing hardship. Soon the vi-
bration of the needle and the booming of the rifle appear as if they were one.
The opening two-minute sequence is brief but captivating. The strategic col-
lapse of the distinction between the sounds of the rifle and the sewing ma-
chine triggers discomfort and raises questions about the damaging effects of
both within the gendered system that they have come to represent. The score
draws us in, breaking through expectations as it affects our perception of
juxtaposed images, thereby prompting us to see each image from a new
perspective.
The sewing machine is an emblematic object; a well-worn image asso-
ciated with women’s work. Yet its enlargement and juxtaposition with the
rifle ask viewers to pause to reimagine its significance. The sewing machine
evokes 1940s Spain and the patriarchal values and ideologies that relegated
women to the domestic sphere during the Franco regime. The device was
also a tool of subjugation within the prison system. Female inmates, most of
whom were imprisoned for their political opposition to the military dictator-
ship, were to ‘redeem’ themselves through forced labor. The militaristic
culture of the regime legitimized such violence through a national Catholic
discourse. Euphemisms served to facilitate the elimination of political con-
flict and the reinforcement of class and gender hierarchies, which were
deemed natural and ordained by God. An animated sequence later in the film
returns to the sewing trope to allude to the silencing of women’s voices, and
more specifically dissident voices. Needles and thread stitch up a woman’s
mouth, which becomes detached from her body. The message is clear: the
sewing machine represents oppressive gender norms. But it also symbolizes
the creative task of the filmmaker—sewing together stories of lives that were
torn asunder by militarized culture and patriarchal violence. Astudillo
weaves together visual and chronicled fragments in a decidedly imperfect
narrative form, resembling the patchwork of memory.
The opening montage sets the stage for the autobiographical commentar-
ies by adult children of former women political prisoners. Both memory and
forgetting inevitably play a role in their process of recollection since they are
at least in their seventies at the time that Astudillo made the film. The
filmmaker makes evident her understanding of the complexities of remem-
brance in the fragmentary documentary form that breaks away from the
traditional talking-head interview and the authoritative voiceover that often
attempts to create a smooth and coherent narrative. Color images of the four
family members in the present only appear after the first sequence and at the
end of the film, but their brief and interlaced voiceover narratives shape the
 Unsettling the Archive 103

archival footage that we see. It is the configuration of the commentary,

sound, editing, and animation that allows the filmmaker to reframe previous-
ly marginalized, distorted, or repressed stories of clandestine resistance while
at the same time recognizing their incomplete nature. The goal is not to erect
a singular mythical narrative of anti-fascist militancy, but rather to enrich our
understanding of a range of experiences through a departure from formulaic
modes of storytelling.
One of the ways that the filmmaker accomplishes this is through the
selection of the interviewees. Of the four, the arguably anti-nostalgic portrait
is conveyed by Albert Pueyo whose aunt, Clara Pueyo Jornet, was briefly
exiled in France in 1939, then detained and incarcerated in 1941 in Les Corts
Women’s Prison for her underground activities with the Unified Socialist
Party of Catalonia (PSUC). Along with other female resistors, she worked in
an establishment in the neighborhood of La Barceloneta called the “Oasis,”
which was a place where women would meet to sew and embroider. Secretly,
however, it functioned as a storeroom for planning and propaganda. As
Quílez Esteve observes, “the women disguised themselves as the angels in
the house to subvert the system” (84). After the regime’s agents raided the
Oasis in 1941, Clara Pueyo Jornet was imprisoned and tortured. As recalled
by her nephew in the film, the interrogators at the prison shattered both of her
shoulder blades. Then, under mysterious circumstances, she escaped and
virtually disappeared without a trace. She was only twenty-seven years old.
The narrative of the allusive figure of Clara Pueyo Jornet is so evocative that
it takes center stage in Astudillo’s feature-length film El gran vuelo, pro-
duced in 2014, six years after De monstruos y faldas. As Quílez Esteve
argues, “the crux of the film lies in the process of disillusionment that Pueyo
experienced within the party for which she fought” (89). While some think
that she escaped to Russia and fell into anonymity, others believe that she
was a victim of the PSUC leadership that distrusted her for her sexual rela-
tionships and indiscretions. It is in that film, El gran vuelo, that Astudillo
dives into the details of the complex lives of women militants. Similar to
Carmen Castillo in Calle Santa Fe, Astudillo makes a powerful commentary
about the patriarchal structures that dominated not only the National-Catholic
right-wing but also the left-wing resistance.
What is most compelling about the audiovisual material that features the
story of Clara Pueyo in De monstruos y faldas is the way in which it chal-
lenges the longer history of gender socialization that restricted women’s roles
and punished them if they did not conform. When Clara’s surviving nephew,
Albert, describes in voice-off narration that as a child he viewed his aunt as a
criminal, we see a black and white wide shot of a woman pushing a baby
carriage on a path in a forested park. The idyllic sound of birds overlays the
following full-body shot of a young boy drinking from a fountain. Connota-
tive links between the found footage of the park and Albert Pueyo’s com-
104 Chapter 3

mentary are not explicitly conveyed to viewers. Instead, their disjuncture

raises questions and generates thought. By foregrounding an image of ac-
ceptable womanhood, Astudillo invites viewers to reflect on the social condi-
tioning that shaped Albert Pueyo’s negative views of his aunt. It is significant
that shortly after this sequence, another interviewee explains how the re-
gime's agent detained her mother for insubordination. In that segment, archi-
val footage of a 1940s printing press overlays the voiceover: “She was ar-
rested and tried as a ‘Real Monster in a Skirt.’” Astudillo takes her title from
that newspaper headline, changing it to Of Monsters and Skirts. In a clever
turn, Astudillo cuts from the printing press to a bird’s eye view archival shot
that looks down on a little girl reading a newspaper. These strategies allow
for a thought-provoking rhetorical intervention. By positioning the Pueyo
interview alongside the park images and the newspaper headlines, the film
fosters a critique of the constraining societal norms that demonized women
like Clara Pueyo Jornet and framed the female figure as inherently and exclu-
sively maternal.

THE NORMALIZATION OF GENDERED VIOLENCE IN

FRANCO’S SPAIN

In arguing that Astudillo highlights the repressive codes of behavior that

women were expected to embrace during the Franco years, it is instructive to
consider De monstruos y faldas with Carmen Martín Gaite’s nonfiction text
Courtship Customs in Postwar Spain (1987, 2004). Martín Gaite
(1925–2000) explains that the ideology of subjugation permeated all levels of
society. The surveillance culture of the Church and State functioned to en-
force that ideology: “We grew up under the watch of those two faces, one
with the white skullcap and one with his little mustache. . . . Their gazes were
watchful, severe, waiting for the slightest sign of insubordination.” (2004,
23). These two symbolic images are at the same time, gendered and militar-
ized. Both Martín Gaite and Astudillo cite newspapers from the Franco peri-
od that shed light on the social construction of gender and how it served to
ensure the economic and political dominance of men. As Helen Graham
notes in the essay “Gender and the State: Women in the 1940s,”

Women were envisioned as the source not only of physical reproduction (i.e.,
babies for the patria) but also “correct” ideological reproduction via the social-
ization of children in the home—the goal here being the imposition of a social
hierarchy. But to ensure this outcome, the state could not really afford to let
the private sphere remain entirely “private.” Control, especially of women, had
to be enforced. Women thus became the target both of a cult of morality and of
the educational and low-level welfare ministrations of state agencies. Al-
 Unsettling the Archive 105

though the Church should be included in this category, predominant here was
the Sección Femenina de Falange. (Graham and Labanyi 1995, 187)

Women and men were taught to understand life through a lens in which
domestic femininity and militarized masculinity were not only normalized
but praised ad nauseam through the education system and state-controlled
media outlets. In De monstruos y faldas Astudillo illustrates the enormous
role of these institutions by intercutting shots of men, women, boys, and girls
reading newspapers throughout the film. But the documentary archive does
not function as a heavy-handed, didactic illustration of what the testimonies
relate. Instead of explicitly telling us that militarized men were depicted as
inherently dominant over women, Astudillo shows us through a profoundly
moving visual system. She invites viewers into the questioning process by
taking incomplete cues and allowing viewers to reconstruct images. How
were narratives about women political prisoners constructed in Francoist
discourse and disseminated in media outlets? How did misogynist ideology
and euphemistic discourse lay the foundation for the perpetration of violence
against female prisoners and later justify it in the aftermath? Ultimately, the
achievement of De monstruos y faldas does not involve the direct representa-
tion of such violence, but rather the collage of gendered symbols that provide
an opportunity to identify the broader societal inequalities and masculinist
conventions that shaped the structures of violence perpetrated against politi-
cally active women. We consider how figures like Clara Pueyo Jornet were
portrayed by the regime’s champions as the ultimate transgressors of societal
norms and consequently without bodily integrity or a legitimate claim to
human rights.
Instead of reinforcing the otherness of gendered violence, De monstruos y
faldas uses an experimental documentary form to ask viewers to consider the
discourses and institutions in which violence emerges (Wunker 2016, 62). In
this way, it unmasks the normalization of misogyny that makes political
detainment and the torture of women prisoners like Clara Pueyo Jornet pos-
sible. The complexity with which the filmmaker treats the overarching theme
of institutionalized violence against women is what makes the film so signifi-
cant. Astudillo prompts viewers to consider how political violence is not only
gendered but shaped by a patriarchal culture that applauds aggressive mascu-
linity and sanctions militarized methods of social control. When male author-
ity over women is exalted and female empowerment is framed as unnatural,
then the detainment and torture of militant women is not merely an aberrant
act of violence, but a pillar in the larger structure of subjugation. 2
106 Chapter 3

UNSETTLING NOSTALGIA IN OF MONSTERS AND SKIRTS

To this point, I have emphasized how Astudillo re-contextualizes archival

footage as a creative and critical response to the hierarchical militarized
Francoist state in Spain. In that cinematic response, she suggests that militar-
ism stemmed from a society steeped in patriarchal culture and conditioned by
unequal power relations that media outlets repeatedly reinforced over
decades. De monstruos y faldas allows us to conceptualize the entanglement
between gender and violence by calling attention to how they emerge and
intersect. Instead of framing the war and dictatorship from a gender-blind
hegemonic perspective, Astudillo traces the links between gender and vio-
lence and the wide-ranging effects of patriarchal culture.
Now, I would like to argue that De monstruos y faldas also nostalgically
portrays multiple forms of resistance that have emerged as another kind of
critical response to militaristic patriarchal ideology. Her meticulous search in
film archives is not for bygone utopias, but for acts of political consciousness
and defiance against the many restrictions that shaped women’s lives within
the confines of Francoist military vigilance. Because the film does not in-
clude a voice-of-authority narration, the filmmaker’s point of view becomes
manifest in the selection and arrangement of sound, image, and text. It is
within that audiovisual system that we may begin to trace the nature of
Astudillo’s nostalgic aesthetic mode.
The Courier font, perhaps the most recognizable typeface of the twentieth
century, is used in the film for the title and credits and reminds viewers,
nostalgically, of a pre-digital time. The Courier font appears on the white
screen in faded black with the accompanying analog sound of a typewriter,
thereby setting the tone of the entire film. It is as if a vintage machine were
scripting the words of the title, letter by letter. Astudillo’s extensive use of
the archive, for both video footage and photographic stills, builds the nostal-
gic tenor and becomes the most distinguishing characteristic of the film. That
cinematic practice of drawing from the archive is grounded in her voracious
appetite for previous forms of image-making. As revealed in a 2018 inter-
view, her longing for an earlier age of photography is driven by a disillusion-
ment with the saturation of images in what she deems a post-photography
age. 3 At a time dominated by the ephemeral Facebook or Snapchat post, she
worries that the concept of the archive has deteriorated and that the value of
the photograph has become obsolete. Looking to the past, she laments the
loss of a time when portraits were prized in the family album. Although it
may seem contradictory or counterintuitive, Astudillo’s nostalgia allows her
to transform old-fashioned or even fossilized forms like photographs and
newsreel footage into cutting-edge art that activates our senses and destabi-
lizes sexist and nationalist visions of roots, family, and nation.
 Unsettling the Archive 107

The opening sequence combines archival footage with stills that spotlight
women and children experiencing extreme adversity. The filmmaker mobi-
lizes otherwise static images, taking them out of what Barthes has conceptu-
alized as a “flat death” or “the realm of stasis, immobility, mortification”
(cited in Hirsch 1997, 4). Viewers witness a repetition of specific images, but
with each replay the filmmaker zooms in a measure in step with the sound-
track, illuminating details otherwise ignored. In a wide shot of a crowd
running in fear, the filmmaker magnifies one woman falling to her knees.
The enlargement of the detail prompts viewers to regard what is routinely
disregarded. A tight close-up of a woman holding a child in a war zone
reappears, testifying to a story of rupture and trauma that is shot through with
the gendered experience of motherhood. While the image is tragic, the dy-
namic musical score that overlays it casts the mother’s gaze as resilient.
Footage of nurses caring for the injured and rifle-wielding milicianas in blue
overalls at the barricades reinforces that depiction of strength and endurance
while representing a range of experiences. These are illustrations of how the
nostalgic search for images of a previous moment of Republican resistance
cannot be separated from issues of gender. As the other chapters in this book
argue, the relationship between nostalgic longing and socially constructed
structures of identity are bound together. It is appropriate to reiterate a central
premise that I established in the introduction. Nostalgic return is a voyage in
time and place that is inevitably intersected by the remembering subject’s
understanding of hierarchies of power. To long for particular sites and mi-
lieus—and the people that once inhabited them—involves perceptions of
times unavoidably embedded in political struggles to either uphold or upend
unequal power relations.
The sound of the 1940s sewing machine in the montage sequence that
introduces the film is doubly significant. While the object evokes the gen-
dered mechanisms of the Francoist state, as I previously explained, the arrest-
ing sound that characterizes the machine’s function also reflects principled
resistance. The pounding quality of the sewing machine enhances the other
component in this montage, which involves the footage of a diver intercut
with an explosion. The seamstress creates, while the diver plunges into dan-
ger. This montage blends rather than explains. With an original voice, it
speaks to the challenges that women faced, but it also celebrates the audacity
with which they met such challenges.
Multiple moments in the film substantiate this interpretation of Astudil-
lo’s portrayal, including one sequence that captures a group of women
marching forward. It is, in fact, the combination of the sound, framing, and
organization of scenes that presents the action as a march rather than a mere
walk. Preceding that particular footage is a voiceover commentary by Enri-
queta Borrás, one of the daughters of a political prisoner who describes the
circumstances of her mother’s detainment. Borrás explains, “She was sen-
108 Chapter 3

tenced to twelve years and one day for supporting the rebellion. Oh, how I
love those words!” The relationship between Borrás’s vindication of dissent
and the subsequent marching scene is not accidental. A close-up archival
shot centers on women’s high-heeled shoes, legs, and skirts. The camera then
gradually travels vertically to a full body shot of the entire group of women
walking arm-in-arm. The deceleration of the footage as they step, coupled
with a steady beat replicating a march, encourages viewers to pause and see
these women as visionaries and rebels. If the military regime framed Repub-
lican women as threatening and monstrous through a highly controlled mis-
ogynist public discourse, then filmmakers like Astudillo reclaim and subvert
such terms by endowing them with power.
Another way in which the film succeeds in disrupting established modes
of representation is through the selection and juxtaposition of oral accounts.
When we turn specifically to the interviews with the three daughters of
former political prisoners, we find that their narratives contrast remarkably
with the commentary by the only male interviewee. We should recall that
Albert Pueyo communicates a sense of distance and disconnection from his
aunt Clara Pueyo Jornet. By contrast, the postwar daughters featured in the
film suggest that despite the pressures of social policing, they formed hetero-
geneous and competing images of femininity and motherhood.
In order to frame the unsettling nostalgic commentary featured in De
monstruos y faldas, it is enlightening to return to Martín Gaite’s Courtship
Customs in Postwar Spain. She suggests that for the children of the early
1940s, memories of politically active Republican women incongruously sat
alongside the static image of ideal womanhood promoted by the Franco
regime. “Grandmother with her prayer book and perennial mantilla coexisted
with another kind of woman, from the female soldier to the ‘vamp’ from the
scholar with her fellowship for work abroad, to the woman who makes
speeches at rallies. They saw such women photographed in magazines,
smoking, legs crossed, driving a car, or looking at bacteria through a micro-
scope. These children heard of talks of strikes, of debates in Parliament, of
emancipation, of secular education, of divorce.” (Martín Gaite 27). De mon-
struos y faldas does not merely immortalize or romanticize the past as utopia,
but rather illustrates these tensions as experienced and remembered by the
daughters of imprisoned women.
The story of Libertad Canela and her mother, Francisca Conejeros, illus-
trates the many dimensions of unsettling nostalgia and its relationship to
identity. Her recollections of a troubled childhood marked by loss and disen-
franchisement curiously come together with positive memories of bonding
and non-conformism as exemplified by her parents. Her mother was impris-
oned at Les Corts Women’s Prison while her father was forced into exile in
France. In one telling vignette, Libertad looks back on the significance of her
name, which means freedom. Her story is incomplete, but we can speculate
 Unsettling the Archive 109

that because she lived in the streets in abject poverty, she had no option but
to turn to the Church for shelter. She recounts that their aid would come at a
high price: she was nearly forced to change her name by baptism and, by
extension, renounce the political and secular identity of her mother. She
fondly remembers her mother’s daring refusal to consent to the erasure of her
daughter’s given name. As viewers listen to Libertad’s evocative narrative of
this unforgettable moment, we see archival footage of large ring and stick. It
is an old child’s game called “hoop rolling” widely played for ages among
different societies. The goal of the game is to keep the hoop upright and to
perform clever maneuvers with it. As Libertad voices her childhood fear of
the imposed disavowal of her name, the hoop falls to the ground. When she
says in the voiceover that her mother refused to agree, the footage is played
in reverse. The hoop defies gravity and is resurrected. In a symbolic gesture,
it returns to the young girl who was originally playing with it. Astudillo re-
signifies found footage of childhood play to project a story of women’s
resistance to the National-Catholic patriarchal order.
Equally illuminating for our conceptualization of unsettling nostalgia are
the memories that Libertad evokes about the community that she forged
among the marginalized children of postwar Barcelona. She explains that she
has many memories of those sad prison visits, but apart from several epi-
sodes, they managed to make friendships. They would play in the courtyard
and go into the communication area together to see their mothers. As Liber-
tad speaks, a faint sound of a lullaby overlays footage of young girls enjoying
themselves in a pool. Later she states that for the people who surrounded her,
the war did not end in 1939, but “despite all that,” she found “solidarity.”
These scenes can be interpreted in two ways. On the one hand, Astudillo
creates a striking mismatch between a voiceover narrative of suffering and
scenes of well-being to project the schism between the experience of the
defeated Republicans and the Francoist victors. Following this logic, idyllic
pictures of comfort and innocence allude to a time of peace. But coupled with
the voiceover, the filmmaker reminds us of the repression hiding behind such
images.
On the other hand, the endearing portrait of youth functions to heighten
the tinge of nostalgia with which Libertad recollects her childhood. Although
she may not wish to return to the time-place of the postwar, viewers observe
how she associates it with a sense of shared values, unity, and collective
Republican identity against the National-Catholic logic. Interpreted from ei-
ther standpoint, Astudillo’s cinematic strategies complicate any simplistic
view of nostalgia as a mindless retreat. The selection of memories of solidar-
ity can be viewed as a conscious effort to counter the regime’s destructive
narrative and as a tool to vindicate an identity while mitigating the pain of
loss. As I explained in the introduction, these findings intersect with Sara
Horowitz’s discoveries as described in the essay “Nostalgia and the Holo-
110 Chapter 3

caust” (2010). Horowitz contends that “Conventionally, nostalgic remem-

brances gesture toward representations of a golden era (home), followed by
catastrophe (separation from or destruction of that home).” That pattern,
Horowitz observes, has shifted in recent texts penned by a younger genera-
tion of writers: “The Holocaust is constructed as a time when—whether by
choice or by coercion—all Jews were one people. This vision of lost unity is
posed against, and also offered as an antidote to, the perceived fragmenta-
tion” of Jewish community (Horowitz 2010, 51). As I will explain the next
chapter titled “Postwar Prison Nostalgia,” the novel La voz dormida by
Dulce Chacón exemplifies how this pattern emerges in narratives written by
a generation of Spanish authors that did not experience the postwar directly.
However, as Libertad’s commentary in De monstruos y faldas reveals, post-
war nostalgia is not limited to a younger generation. In both cases, it is not
that the horror of the postwar is absent in these representations. “Rather, the
horror sits incongruously beside these gestures of nostalgia” (Horowitz 2010,
56).
The unsettling nature of nostalgia also surfaces saliently in the reflections
of Enriqueta Borrás, daughter of Rosa Mateu. As I previously stated,
Borrás’s mother was sentenced to twelve years in prison for supporting “the
rebellion,” a term that Borrás reclaims and celebrates in the documentary. In
narrating the relationship that she had with her mother, she affirms an ethical
and cultural attachment to the history of women’s anti-fascist resistance. But
rather than bury uncomfortable or conflicting memories of her mother, she
allows them to interpolate and transform otherwise glowing vignettes. The
audiovisual material magnifies that complexity. In her first comment, she
states that her mother was absent. Astudillo combines the commentary with
an off-tripod shaky and out-of-focus video of the passageways in what seems
to be an outdoor labyrinth. The accompanying sound replicates gusts of
wind. The handheld tracking shot conveys to viewers that we are going down
memory lane, but that the foggy lens of time will inevitably cloud our gaze.
When Borrás speaks of her mother, she offers anecdotal and impression-
istic stories. Astudillo couples them with intriguing images that destabilize
the reductive effects of stereotypes. In one sequence, she describes how she
responded to her mother’s absence within a society that deemed women’s
political activism as transgressive. Similar to the case of Libertad, we can
conjecture that Borrás lived at an orphanage like the Auxilio Social or some
other form of residential institution for the care of children whose parents
were detained, deceased, or extremely impoverished. Since the other children
had visitors on the weekends while her parents were both in prison, she
“invented” an image of a mother for the adults at the institution and herself.
The filmmaker brilliantly constructs this scene to underscore the significance
of a child’s vivid imagination and her creative strategies for survival.
Borrás’s comments overlay archival footage of a woman looking in a mirror
 Unsettling the Archive 111

as she applies red lipstick. The footage seems to be a 1940s advertisement for
a makeup vanity. It is a curious contraption from which two mechanical arms
emerge with powder puffs. As it playfully dusts the model’s cheeks, we hear
Borrás’s laughter. Told in this way, this story and its unconventional fram-
ing, work to bring a range of experiences out from underneath the blanket of
gender-blind generalizations about the postwar and political persecution.
Hearing Borrás’s account of her mother’s release from prison also offers
a revealing window into the ways in which Republican women and their
daughters have grappled with Francoist revenge and its lasting consequences.
She explains that by the time her mother was released from a twelve-year
prison sentence, she was fifteen years old:

My mother and I had, naturally, a huge generational conflict. My mother

wanted to experience the period that she hadn’t been able to live. She wanted
to dress me up and do things for me. She would frequently say, “I have to take
care of my little girl.” What little girl? Little girl? I was already fifteen years
old and was working like mad because no one would give her a job.

By including these difficult memories, the film refuses to construct a smooth

or easy narrative, and much less culminate in either a categorically tragic or
conversely happy ending. Instead, the film blurs these boundaries, working
to convey the gendered experiences of vulnerability and courage, division
and connection, loss and recovery.
While Borrás gives voice to the tensions that imprisonment produced, the
account of the fourth and final interviewee, Maricarmen Gualleros, daughter
of Isabel Cánovas, mostly accentuates the beauty and bravery of a militant
mother and her sacrifice. The body language and facial expressions of these
two interviewees seem to communicate this difference. Borrás looks directly
into the camera through dark sunglasses, while Gualleros gazes up to the sky
with a smile. In one brief illustration of an episode that took place in a
courthouse, Gualleros tells the story of her mother’s defense of the Mossos
d’Esquadra, the autonomous police force that had sided with the Generalitat
de Catalunya and was dissolved by the Francoist forces after the war. Along
with their families, they asked for clemency. Gualleros asserts that after the
Civil Guard violently chastised the Mossos for not speaking Castilian, her
mother intervened by raising her fist at the authorities. This account is set
over archival footage of women and men marching together with their fists
clenched in solidarity. The film then cuts to an image of a printing press
while Gualleros recounts how her mother was severely punished for that act
of resistance. After the regime’s agents smashed her face and chest with a
musket, they arrested her. Later, she was put on trial as “A Real Monster in a
Skirt.” The film cuts to a printing press in the 1940s and then features
multiple shots of children and adults reading the newspaper. As I explained
112 Chapter 3

earlier, those curated images and their strategic sequence encourage viewers
to consider the role of the media in the dissemination of Francoist ideology
and the demonization of Republican women.
These scenes move beyond gender-neutral conceptualizations of state vi-
olence and raise questions about the social significance of gender socializa-
tion and militarization. Such a move sheds light on the extensive sources that
produce authoritarian regimes as well as the misogynist rhetoric and repres-
sion that such systems generate. The guard who brutalized and publicly
humiliated Gualleros’s mother, as well as the newspaper that villainized her
and the officials that found her guilty in a kangaroo court, subscribed to and
enforced sexist assumptions about models of ideal Catholic femininity that
were inextricably bound to the glorification of passivity and maternal self-
sacrifice. Again, the resemblance between the Spanish case and the Chilean
case is hard to ignore. Thirty years after the early Franco years, the Pinochet
regime’s agents aggressively defended the notion that respectable Chilean
womanhood necessarily involved devotion to the patriarch and the children.
As Cynthia Enloe maintains, “A woman who strayed from this model, who
participated in all-women anti-Pinochet rallies, who organized soup kitchens
in the urban shantytowns, thereby surrendered her protective shield of re-
spectability. She deserved to be raped, to be treated by the government’s men
as a ‘whore.’ By choosing to discard her cloak of feminized respectability,
she was asking for it” (Enloe 2000, 130). Without collapsing difference, a
similar statement could be made of Franco’s Spain. De monstruos y faldas
makes us think about how the figures of the civil guard, the legal system, and
the media, all contributed to the normalization of ideas about acceptable
Spanish womanhood and the justification of violence against women who did
not comply. It also moves us to view forms of transgression within such a
hostile environment as extraordinary.
The story of compassion and heroism that Gualleros conveys about her
mother, as well as Astudillo’s framing of it, comes across as more nostalgic
in comparison with Borrás’s account; however, it is not without complexity.
The painful stories of prison life that Gualleros tells in the film reveal that her
mother shared a great deal with her daughter, who in turn, became an empa-
thetic listener. In one sequence, she reflects on the obscure history of depres-
sion and morphine use among women political prisoners sentenced to death.
As Gualleros attempts to paint a picture of their state of constant fear, the
filmmaker places before us several audiovisual metaphors. For instance, we
see archival footage of a boat adrift with several out-of-focus figures
slumped over like corpses. This metaphor symbolizes the destabilizing im-
pact of trauma so unspeakable that it calls for unconventional forms of repre-
sentation. This scene demonstrates how Astudillo challenges traditional ap-
proaches to documentary filmmaking that, as Stella Bruzzi suggests, seek to
‘represent an uncomplicated, descriptive relationship between subject and
 Unsettling the Archive 113

text’ (Bruzzi 2006, 187). Using innovative strategies, Astudillo magnifies the
fractured nature of memories and their uneasy narration in the present.
If we recall the previous chapter on Calle Santa Fe, we find striking
parallels in relation to these scenes. While some daughters conveyed to Cas-
tillo the tensions that have marked their relationships with their mothers for
their political activism, others showed a significant commitment to their
mothers’ stories. Castillo’s interviews in Calle Santa Fe demonstrate that the
mother-daughter relationship, based on empathy and a regard for memory,
might contribute to a sense of identity as well as a capacity for caring attach-
ment to communities. In De monstruos y faldas Maricarmen Gualleros ends
her accounts with the following words: “My mother was in jail, but because
of her ideals, not for murder or theft. She has taught that to her three children,
and we have taught that to ours.” As her voice cracks, she says. “A beautiful
woman, my mother. Not only beautiful but also very brave.” Following these
words, we see a creased and faded photograph of two little girls smiling,
followed by another still of a political prisoner with her daughter sitting on
her lap. We can only assume that the image we see is of Gualleros and her
mother at Les Corts Women’s Prison.
The film soon ends the way it began, with b-roll footage of a 1940s
sewing machine. This time the sound that accompanies the image seems less
suspenseful and more mournful as it combines with a Spanish guitar. The
rhythm of the sewing machine is nevertheless persistent and determined,
reflecting the ongoing need to stitch together stories of the long-standing
legacy of Francoist violence at a time when the number of first-generation
survivors of the Spanish Civil War is quickly decreasing. That act of sewing
becomes a metaphor for storytelling and repair, however slight. The film
constitutes an imaginative response to patriarchal ideology and how the Fran-
coist version of history has been constructed and used. With its multiple
narrators, thematic complexity, and fragmentary organization, the film denat-
uralizes the underlying misogynist beliefs that shaped the regime’s practices.
It also deepens our understanding of traumatic memories rooted in dictatorial
repression that had deeply engrained gender specificities. At the same time, it
calls our attention to various nostalgic responses and the ways in which
unsettling nostalgia might become a tool to reclaim histories of resistance
while bringing out their profound complexities.

SITES AND PALIMPSESTS

Before concluding, I would like to turn to the filmmaker’s unique framing of

the women’s prison since it invokes some of the core issues in the book,
including the relationship between sites, nostalgia, and resistance through
reclamation and recontextualization. The sequence begins with a voiceover
114 Chapter 3

narrative by Albert Pueyo, who explains that Les Corts Women’s Prison was
originally a convent. Looking beyond Pueyo’s brief remarks, we find that it
was converted to La Prisión Provincial de Mujeres de Barcelona during the
Republic. With the entry of the Francoist troops in Barcelona in January
1939, Les Corts became a prison governed by a religious order for the detain-
ment of leftist women. By 1939 there were about two thousand inmates, with
more than forty children. Inmates were exploited through forced labor, and at
least ten women were executed (Herná ndez Holgado, 2008). As Pueyo sug-
gests in the voiceover, the prison was later transformed into the well-known
department store El Corte Inglés in the bustling Diagonal Avenue.
The evocation of the place’s multiple uses enables a disruptive reflection
on the links between socio-political histories and alerts us to specific conti-
nuities. It is hard, for example, to ignore the relationship between the site’s
names. The term les corts in Catalan and las cortes in Castilian is derived
from the Latin cohors (cohort) and is used to refer to one of Barcelona’s
districts. In the plural, the term also refers to judicial courts, which have been
framed in the official discourse as synonymous with justice. Considering the
Franco regime’s extrajudicial practices, the name Les Corts for the women’s
prison is striking for its incongruity. Today El Corte Inglés has become
synonymous with capitalist consumption boasting an imperial presence even
beyond Spain as one of the biggest department store groups in Europe. By
placing fragmentary snapshots of the prison that embodied the violent at-
tempt to silence anti-fascist and anti-capitalist women’s voices alongside
images of a department store that currently represents late-capitalism in post-
dictatorial Spain, Astudillo brings to visibility the multi-temporal character
of sites and the continuum of ideologies that they house.
When we look closely at the audiovisual material in the one-minute se-
quence that features the prison’s metamorphosis over time, we identify the
filmmaker’s deliberate effort to recognize the massive repression that took
place within the site’s walls. The framing of the sequence also indicates the
desire to commemorate the Republican women and their children who were
forced to endure it. Organized methodically, the sequence begins with a
panoramic shot of the modern department store on a decidedly overcast day.
The film then cuts to a close-up of the head of a female mannequin dressed in
lingerie in the store window. After two additional shots of plastic female
models on display behind glass, the film interjects the Francoist past with
black and white still photographs of the inmates behind the walls at Les Corts
Women’s Prison. Nuns sit at the center and also flank the prisoners. Then,
three different archival stills show panoramic shots of the prison in the
1940s. The sequence galvanizes viewers to associate the repression and ob-
jectification of women then and now. The mannequin is lifeless and propped
in a window for viewers to judge, desire, or disregard. If it were not for the
rhythmic pulse of the soundtrack conjuring the mood of a rebellion or a
 Unsettling the Archive 115

haunting, we might be influenced to see Spanish women as victims entirely

stripped of their personhood, but that is not the case. The low pitch cello
combines with percussion sound shakers to produce a vibrant pattern that
does not cast the images over which it is played as tragic or one-dimensional.
The sound guides our emotions, occasioning us to view the story of injustice,
confrontation, and empowerment in equal measure. Once again, the music is
a crucial signifier of the filmmaker’s perspective and a central element in the
audience’s emotional and intellectual viewing experience.
This memorable sequence also poignantly dialogues with the other works
in Unsettling Nostalgia. Chapter 1 explores how the novelist Roberto Brod-
sky uses the building for the UNCTAD as both a physical vestige of Chile’s
recent past and a mirror in which the narrator sees his own reflection and
unfulfilled dreams. Chapter 2 analyzes how Carmen Castillo’s documentary
Calle Santa Fe also explores the filters of memory through which we view
(and feel) public and personal spaces. She seeks to reclaim the safe house
where her partner, Miguel Enriquez, was gunned down and in the process
transmits a powerful message about the generative use of the past in the
present. Through narrative and cinematic strategies, Brodsky, Castillo, and
Astudillo respond to the effacement of sites and the whitewashing of dictato-
rial histories. To use Andreas Huyssen’s term, they frame edifices and com-
munal areas in Spain and Chile as palimpsests that are never entirely erased
(Huyssen 2003, 7). These authors and filmmakers vindicate the shrouded
memories of those effaced spaces and remind the public of the cultural mi-
lieus that came before the Pinochet and Franco regimes, as well as the violent
attempt to terminate them.

RECEPTION, REACH, AND REDRESS

As a small budget documentary produced as a master’s project in film, De

monstruos y faldas has received limited attention. With English subtitles and
open online access, it has the potential to reach an international viewership;
however, Astudillo does not provide any explanatory titles or background
information for viewers unfamiliar with the context. While that choice may
contribute to artistic goals, it may also be viewed as a shortcoming. The film
never introduces the speakers by name, which makes it extremely difficult to
match the names with the faces and to connect the fragments of each account
to the corresponding interviewee. On the one hand, that directorial decision
conveys the idea that the stories of the daughters were collective and shared.
On the other hand, that choice runs the risk of creating confusion. By not
naming those who have chosen to bear witness, the film also jeopardizes the
possibility to attribute agency to the survivors.
116 Chapter 3

In my estimation, what proves most valuable is the quality of creative

insight that the film achieves. Its economy of language and unpredictable
juxtapositions, accomplished through meticulous editing and research, re-
quires viewers to decipher the film’s disruptive meaning. We are moved to
consider the larger struggle for cultural survival and belonging within the
context of patriarchal power and militarization in twentieth-century Spain. It
is a struggle framed not in terms of a homogeneous collective reality, but
rather as heterogeneous and contingent upon the construction of identities
and the intersections of class, politics, and gender in their development. If
militarism has violently transfigured institutions and lives, Astudillo’s film
reveals that it has failed to extinguish the desire to return, rethink, reconnect
and re-signify women’s stories of anti-fascist resistance. In this way, the
nostalgia identified in De monstruos y faldas contrasts with the backward-
looking gaze usually associated with it. It is not a nostalgia that inherently
transfigures history into a flat narrative, paralyzing the process of reflection.
As Jameson suggests in ‘Walter Benjamin, or nostalgia,’ nostalgic longing
can also be a source of inspiration to the extent that it embraces a historiciz-
ing perspective, one that situates the emergence of past collective identities
in the historical situation that made that emergence possible. With De mon-
struos y faldas, Astudillo makes visible an unsettling form of nostalgia that
brings together the desire to reconstruct bonds with an attempt to excavate
the fractured and diverse nature of memories, as well as their thorny articula-
tion in the present. The film offers new avenues to generate discussion not
only on the gendered nature of Francoist violence but also on how the chil-
dren of survivors and filmmakers consciously create memory narratives and
oppositional identities by foregrounding strategies of resilience and bonding.

NOTES

1. Carolina Astudillo directed and co-wrote the script with Gustavo Junqueira. Others
involved in the production, animation, montage, editing, sound mixing, and music include,
Milagros Herrera Cisneros, Catalina Calle Arango, Camera Ivan Piredda, Marco Arauco Tues-
ta, Martin Sappia, and Sven Vosseler.
2. I make this argument in another article titled “Torture, Masculinity, and Resistance in
Chilean Documentary Film: Patricio Guzmán and Marcela Said,” forthcoming in the edited
volume Gender and Violence in Iberian and Latin American Cinemas, eds. M.J. Gámez
Fuentes, R. Maseda García, and B. Zecchi. Forthcoming, 2020.
3. See “Entrevista a Carolina Astudillo, directora de Ainhoa, yo no soy esa” by Mauro
Lukasievicz in Revista Caligari, September 11, 2018.
 Chapter Four

Postwar Prison Nostalgia

La voz dormida by Dulce Chacón

Spanning the years 1939–1963, Dulce Chacón’s (1953–2003) testimonial

inflected novel La voz dormida (2002) narrates the experiences of a group of
communist women that were incarcerated in Madrid’s Ventas prison for their
support of the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Among the political
prisoners is Hortensia, a young communist militiawoman who will be exe-
cuted shortly after giving birth to her daughter, Tensi. One of her primary
concerns is to record her memories in a small blue journal that she will
bequeath to Tensi. In it, Hortensia recounts the story of the executions, the
inhumane sanitary conditions in the prison, the lack of food and clean water,
the humiliation and mistreatment of the prisoners by the guards, and the loss
of loved ones. But she also recounts the hope, solidarity, and political com-
mitment shared among the prisoners. Hortensia, like the other characters in
Chacón’s novel, is anxious about her past, for what is being silenced, forgot-
ten, erased, and manipulated in a Spain monopolized by a hegemonic Fran-
coist political narrative. Hortensia’s anxiety about such oppressive circum-
stances, however, registers certain concerns within the author’s own present.
Based on the real oral testimonies of an ever-dwindling number of Re-
publican women and men, the novel seeks to establish a counter-narrative
that bears witness to the repression and violent deaths of socialists and com-
munists in the first decades of the Franco dictatorship. In this chapter, I will
explore the form and function of nostalgia in Chacón’s narrative and discuss
how the novel has played a role in the larger movement to address the
legacies of dictatorial violence; however, I will also argue that unlike the
other works in this book, the author presents a reductive characterization of
Republican women and a restorative nostalgic intertextual employment of
117
118 Chapter 4

texts and past motifs. While Chacón seeks to stir silenced voices, her gaze
backward reinforces gender stereotypes and diminishes the highly conten-
tious political landscape.

POSTWAR RESTORATIVE NOSTALGIA

The novel pays particular attention to the experiences of leftist urban work-
ing-class and lower-middle-class women whose loss was twofold. Through
plotlines and characterizations, the author represents an authoritarian regime
that, as Helen Graham points out, not only sought to achieve capitalist mod-
ernization to the advantage of the oligarchy but also sought to establish an
“ultra-conservative construction of ‘ideal’ womanhood, perceived as the fun-
damental guarantor of social stability” (Graham 1995, 182). As Graham
contends, after the war, the Franco regime punished groups of women that
had challenged the established order culturally, politically, and economical-
ly. Throughout the dictatorship, archives containing the records of state retri-
bution towards women were predominately under the custody of the police
and the regime prohibited public dissemination of prison accounts.
Since the death of Franco in 1975, historians have made some advances in
the investigation and documentation of the wartime reprisals and Francoist
repression; however, up until the mid-1980s, the experiences of imprisoned
leftist women were overlooked in Spanish Civil War historiography and
frequently neglected even by progressive historians (Herrmann 2003, 12).
Even at the turn of the twenty-first century when memories of the Spanish
Civil War and postwar became a central focus of an enormous body of
cultural production, publications dedicated to women’s prison memories
were still rare. In the 2008 essay titled “Mujeres en guerra: repensar la
historia,” Mary Nash characterizes the ongoing subordinate position of wom-
en in the historical record of the Civil War by emphasizing their place in
footnotes, appendixes, or single bibliographic references. (Nash 2008, 62). If
we accept, then, that a disproportionate amount of attention has focused on
men’s experiences of war and political persecution, we might begin to under-
stand why some historians, survivors, filmmakers, and novelists, like Dulce
Chacón, Carolina Astudillo, and Almudena Grandes, are anxious to explore
women’s stories.
One trailblazing figure who partly inspired the novel La voz dormida is
Tomasa Cuevas (1917–2007), a former political prisoner from 1939-1945
who recognized the importance of women’s prison experiences decades be-
fore others. Amid the backdrop of the early transition to democracy, Cuevas
gathered oral testimonies from her female prison companions. In 1985, Cue-
vas published Cárcel de Mujeres (1939–1945) to transmit a compelling
record of Republican women’s accounts particularly during the years leading
 Postwar Prison Nostalgia 119

up to the civil war and in the aftermath. Cuevas’s pioneering collection of

prison testimonies, along with a compilation of oral interviews conducted by
Dulce Chacón (1954–2003), inform the novel La voz dormida. At the end of
the book, Chacón expresses her gratitude to Cuevas, historians Fernanda
Romeu Alfaro, Mary Nash, Paul Preston, and many former political prison-
ers who gave her their stories.
The title of the novel suggests that Chacón seeks to awaken the “dor-
mant” voices of the past. But, as many in the field of Memory Studies
maintain, access to the past is more a question of the recreation of memories
than the restoration of a lost and unchanging entity. In recording the history
of the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship, Chacón invokes competing
discourses, one associated with the Franco regime and the other with the
Second Republic. She looks to the past to champion the memory of Republi-
can women and to uphold the political values related to the groups portrayed
in the novel (solidarity, equality, pluralism, political and cultural freedom).
In public statements before her untimely death in 2003, Chacón emphasized
her admiration for the democratic-leftist ideals of the Second Republic, her
affiliation with the contemporary incarnation of the Spanish communist party
(Izquierda Unida), and her conviction that the transition to democracy failed
to pave the way for an open dialogue about the contentious past.
On the one hand, Chacón’s novel has played an important role in the
politics of memory in the post-dictatorial present as it has exposed the vastly
under-examined histories of political violence against women. To date, this is
the predominant argument made about La voz dormida. On the other hand, it
could be argued that Chacón renders largely monochromatic characters and
seems to silence the dystopian consequences of the war, namely the profound
political and social dissonance among the defeated. In La guerra persistente
(2006) Antonio Gómez López Quiñones emphasizes the utopian current in
the shaping of heroic characterizations and plotlines in La voz dormida. 1
Focusing primarily on the male characters, López Quiñones contends that
Chacón’s utopic interpretation of the war presents a paradox: the society of
that time is not utopic in spite of the great evils brought by the war, but
precisely thanks to them. (López Quiñones 2006, 197). His analysis prompts
readers to question the implications of a portrayal that recollects the war and
postwar nostalgically.
Without collapsing difference, I find that López Quiñones signals a pat-
tern that Sara Horowitz traces in the aforementioned article “Nostalgia and
the Holocaust” (2010). Horowitz describes the thematic shifts that she finds
when comparing memoirs written by Holocaust survivors with those written
by their adult children, commonly referred to as the postmemory generation.
As I previously stated, Horowitz contends that “Conventionally, nostalgic
remembrances gesture toward representations of a golden era (home), fol-
lowed by catastrophe (separation from or destruction of that home).” That
120 Chapter 4

pattern, she observes, has significantly changed in texts written by a second

generation born after the Holocaust. The home and its destruction collapse
into one temporal object of nostalgia (Horowitz 2010, 56). “The Holocaust is
constructed as a time when—whether by choice or by coercion—all Jews
were one people. This vision of lost unity is posed against, and also offered
as an antidote to, the perceived fragmentation” of the Jewish community
(Horowitz 2010, 51). While the first generation of survivors longs for the
richness and diversity of Jewish life before the Holocaust, the second genera-
tion often mourns the loss of the world that they were born into- “a place
already stripped of Jewish community, already marked by death and atroc-
ity” (Horowitz 2010, 42). Citing a range of works, Horowitz asserts, “It is not
that the horror of the Holocaust is absent in these representations. Rather, the
horror sits incongruously beside these gestures of nostalgia” (Horowitz 2010,
56).
Horowitz’s study is useful in my understanding of some Spanish cultural
production written by a second generation of authors that were born after the
Spanish Civil War. Born in 1954, Dulce Chacón came of age two decades
after the Civil War. Authors like Chacón experienced directly “el segundo
franquismo” (1959–1975), or the second phase of the dictatorship, character-
ized by a sustained public campaign to normalize the criminalization of the
remaining leftist opposition and to depict them as “anti-Spanish.” For over
four decades, generations of Spaniards reached adulthood through an educa-
tional system that sought to solidify hegemonic narratives of gender, class,
and nation. It is precisely that narrative that Chacón sets out to dismantle in
her novel. In addition to Dulce Chacón and Almudena Grandes, whose work
I examine in this book, I would also cite Manuel Rivas (b. 1957) as a leading
figure in this cohort of authors. In El lápiz del carpintero, published original-
ly in Galician as O lapis do carpinteiro (1998), the author details the violent,
rat-infested and disease-inducing conditions of a prison site after Galicia had
fallen to Francoist forces. As I explain in the article “Return to Galicia:
Nostalgia, Nation and Gender in Manuel Rivas’s Spain,” Rivas explores the
hierarchies of power that fueled incarceration and violence in the early
1940s, but he also projects an idealized image of a community-oriented
environment where male prisoners of many political stripes show a deep
sense of humanity towards one another (DiGiovanni 2017, 22). Rivas is one
of a number of authors whose reflections of defeat and destruction are bound
up in positive evocations of Republican unity and belonging.
What is unique about Chacón’s La voz dormida is its focus on the experi-
ence of women political prisoners. The importance of Chacón’s move to
bring women prisoners from the footnote to the page cannot be overstated.
The novel depicts an early postwar period in which the regime brutally
punished groups of women that had challenged the established order. But
Chacón’s descriptions of the destruction of Republican communities, the
 Postwar Prison Nostalgia 121

misogynistic reprisals against women who challenged traditional gender

norms, and the physical and emotional exhaustion of political prisoners, are
all interwoven into a poignant narrative of Republican women’s resilience,
creativity, and bonding. If the prison becomes the site of roots and belonging,
then the perplexing notion of postwar prison nostalgia must be addressed.
For sympathizers of the Second Republic, the yearning for the pre-dictatorial
Republican past seems unsurprising. More remarkable and in need of analy-
sis is the nostalgic element in contemporary representations of the period of
dictatorial rule.
In Chacón’s novel, the discourse of home and roots is situated within the
unlikely site of the Ventas women’s prison in the early 1940s. Chacón per-
forms two seemingly incompatible tasks: the author depicts a dystopic period
to inform readers about nationalist politics of exclusion, misogyny, and vio-
lence. At the same time, her narrative imbues memories of subjugation and
suffering with nostalgic memories of solidarity and the development of col-
lective consciousness. That is also the case of Carmen Castillo, Carolina
Astudillo, and Almudena Grandes, all studied in this book, but their narra-
tives contrast with Chacón’s to the extent that they render visible the coexis-
tence of courage, ambiguity, vulnerability, and contradiction. In doing so,
Castillo, Astudillo, and Grandes shed new light on the atrocities of the re-
gimes and the messy moral dilemmas that they produced, which were at the
same time gendered. By contrast, La voz dormida champions the memory of
Republican women in a categorical way, suggesting that the horrors of prison
life unequivocally offered the female prisoners an opportunity to overcome
all adversity and loss through companionship and a shared vision of social
justice. By recasting a traumatic past into something meaningful, uplifting,
and affirming, she glosses over a spectrum of ignored experiences still in
need of illumination.
Although it may sound surprising, I am suggesting that the novel illus-
trates what Boym theorizes as “restorative nostalgia.” According to Boym,
“Restorative nostalgia puts emphasis on nostos and proposes to rebuild the
lost home and patch up memory gaps. Reflective nostalgia dwells in algia, in
longing and loss, the imperfect process of remembrance” (Boym 2001, 41).
Typically, restorative nostalgia characterizes nationalist revivals, traditional
values and reactionary political discourses. Since Chacón’s novel conveys a
critique of the gendered and right-wing Catholic discourses that shaped the
military regime’s ideology, “restorative nostalgia” seems like an unsuitable
term to describe the author’s nostalgic depiction. But it is also true that
through the content and the form, Chacón proposes to unearth the silenced
and heroic past, restoring it intact and mending memory gaps. Boym argues
that restorative nostalgics “do not think of themselves as nostalgic; they
believe that their project is about truth” (Boym 2001, 41). This type of
nostalgia tends to suppress the digressive, incomplete, and fractured nature of
122 Chapter 4

memories of atrocities and their difficult and subjective narration in the

present. In the attempt to recreate for the reader an unmediated representation
of women's postwar experiences, Chacón renders invisible the complex pro-
cess through which fragmented memories about political and cultural repres-
sion are pieced together and narrated. The absence of nuance in the novel
underpins a narrowly construed interpretation of the past and the process of
memory.
This chapter problematizes the overtly idealizing form of nostalgia that
permeates Chacón’s novel, yet it does not dismiss the work as a mere retreat
into the past. If the author’s glowing emotionally-charged gaze backward
reduces the highly complex political landscape, it also accomplishes the im-
portant task of compelling readers from multiple generations to think about
women’s wartime roles. Chacón’s novel must be situated within a cultural
landscape that had previously lacked women’s perspectives of the war and
postwar. La voz dormida became a bestseller in Spain and was later translat-
ed into numerous languages and adapted to the screen. It galvanized a wide
readership, stimulating readers to explore new avenues for historical under-
standing and prompting long overdue questions about the intersections be-
tween revolutionary politics, gender, and class. The subsequent increase in
forums and publications dedicated to the topic, along with widespread refer-
ence to the book, substantiate these claims.
For many, the novel has become a point of reference in a broader attempt
to reclaim an identity in opposition to the Francoist ideal. It forms part of the
imaginary of many intellectuals, activists, writers, filmmakers, social work-
ers and citizens involved in the movement for the recovery of historical
memory, which was put into law in 2006 during the government of Prime
Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. As I stated in the introduction, the
Law of Historical Memory was passed after a highly contentious vote and
gave formal recognition to the regime’s victims, prohibited political events at
the Valley of the Fallen, authorized the removal of Francoist symbols from
public buildings and finally sanctioned state funding of the identification and
exhumation of victims of Francoist repression. Since the conservative Popu-
lar Party has obstructed the implementation of the law, debates surrounding
its limitations continue today. This brief account serves to contextualize
Chacón’s novel and to point to the role that it has played in the current
memory debates. It would be shortsighted to dismiss La voz dormida; how-
ever, this chapter seeks to complicate it, exploring the ways in which it
reveals and conceals the complex memories of women’s involvement in the
anti-Franco resistance.
In what follows, I will examine the restorative nostalgic representation of
the Ventas women’s prison community, analyzing key passages that depict
solidarity and bonding between women born from war and postwar experi-
ences. I will focus on several characters; Hortensia (the iconic miliciana),
 Postwar Prison Nostalgia 123

Elvira (the young guerrillera), and the prison guards. I will pay particular
attention to Hortensia’s execution story, which alludes to the real death story
of the Trece Rosas (a group of thirteen young women of the Unified Socialist
Youth who were executed by a Francoist firing squad in 1939). An analysis
of these characterizations, plotlines, and settings shows that in nostalgic
longing, the yearned-for past is “depicted as the source of natural unity, order
and authenticity” (Horowitz 2010, 49). Echoing Horowitz, “The moral abso-
lutes amid the horror promise to restore a lost existential clarity to the gener-
ations that come after” (Horowitz 2010, 51). By representing the past
through a restorative nostalgic lens, Chacón commemorates the struggles of
Republican women and brings their stories from the margins to the center,
but she also curtails a more nuanced engagement with the roots, effects, and
legacies of the regime’s egregious human rights abuses and the misogyny
that shaped them.

PRISON COMMUNITIES, COURAGE, AND CONNECTION

La voz dormida is divided into three large sections, each composed of a

series of mini-chapters, wherein a third-person narrator relates the charac-
ters’ war and postwar experiences. The leading female characters that reflect
the author’s nostalgia for a revolutionary past include Elvira, Hortensia, To-
masa, and Reme. Elvira is a aixteen-year-old Valencian communist prisoner
whose father and brother fought for the Second Republic. Hortensia is a
Cordobés communist prisoner sentenced to death for her involvement with
the guerrillas after the Republican defeat. Tomasa is a middle-aged commu-
nist prisoner (probably loosely based on the Catalán Tomasa Cuevas) whose
family was murdered by the Nationalists during the war. Finally, Reme is a
Murcian prisoner whose grandson died in the war, fighting for the Republic.
Her only crime was to have displayed a Republican flag after the Nationalist
takeover of her city. The lives of these imprisoned women and guerrilla
fighters are intertwined with other victims of the regime that are not incarcer-
ated but suffer pressure from state agents as a result of their familial relation-
ships with prisoners. These characters include Pepita, Hortensia’s sister who
operates as a messenger between the prisoners and the members of the guer-
rilla; Don Fernando Ortega, a communist sympathizer who becomes the
Ventas prison doctor and an ally to the anti-Franco guerrilla; and Doña Celia,
the owner of the boardinghouse where Pepita resides. The portrayal of these
characters offers readers insight into the daily lives of Republican women
and men in Madrid in the 1940s, exposing a catalog of arbitrary repression,
hunger, poverty, and fear. Similar to El corazón helado, the narrator’s de-
scriptions suggest that violence against Republicans and their families was
not limited to prison and execution, but extended to the psychological humil-
124 Chapter 4

iation and economic exploitation of survivors who managed to avoid incar-

ceration.
The Ventas prison illustrated in the novel resembles the prisons described
in numerous testimonies; chaotic, dilapidated, overcrowded, impoverished,
filthy, and teeming with disease and parasites, including ringworm, typhus,
fleas, lice, dysentery, pellagra, syphilis, and tuberculosis. Remarkably, this
oppressive context offers the characters a space to deepen their friendships
and strengthen their political and moral values such as self-sacrifice, gene-
rosity, and loyalty. The Ventas prison becomes a place of fellowship not only
due to the challenges that the women shared within its walls but also as a
result of the gatherings and tender exchanges that took place inside. Educa-
tion, the cornerstone of the Second Republic, becomes a practice, a rite and a
source of intellectual and emotional growth within an otherwise suffocating
site. Reading and writing are skills that literate prisoners teach to those
previously deprived of an education. That detail not only seeks to underscore
the values of the Republic but also to show the vast social-economic inequal-
ities in Spain that the Republic sought to change. Such celebratory imagery
of the political prisoners and their relationships folds Republican Spain, the
war and the postwar into one context reframed as a time for transformation
through the process of conscientization and collective bonding.
The prison is also a site where longing for the prewar past is enacted
through a kind of nostalgia therapy. In one scene, Hortensia suffers a bout of
dysentery but manages to use nostalgic memories of her husband as a way to
look beyond her misery: “Ringworm, typhus, fleas, lice, dysentery: it’s scan-
dalous.’ No, none of these interests Hortensia at that moment. . . . All she
wants to remember is a kiss. A furtive kiss, the last she managed to snatch
from Felipe in Cerro Umbría” (Chacón 2006, 87). 2 The author imagines how
the experience of pain and humiliation may be transformed into an experi-
ence of meaningful endurance rather than alienation from desire. This detail
suggests the function of nostalgic memory in the context of adversity, and
also the importance of nurturing an emotional self in the process of individu-
al and collective survival. The prison is a site of birth and growth, literally
and symbolically, as Hortensia delivers Tensi into the world while Elvira
gains an empowering critical consciousness that allows her to become a
leading guerrilla fighter after an incredible prison escape.
In one representative scene, Tomasa is punished by the prison guard,
Mercedes, for cursing the squalid living conditions that the incarcerated
women were forced to tolerate. Rather than respond in fear, all of the women
raise their left fists in the air and sing “El Himno Comunista” (“The Interna-
tional”) in solidarity with Tomasa. This song not only evokes the sense of
common purpose and idealism shared among the prisoners, but it is also a
powerful act of defiance. The author urges readers to imagine how intersect-
ing forms of gender, class, and political oppression were defied. The itali-
 Postwar Prison Nostalgia 125

cized song lyrics are punctuated by descriptions of the women singing in

unison:

The deafening truth is on the march. The three women go on singing softly,
Tomasa joins in. We have to shatter the past. The other inmates take up their
companions’ song. . . . Legion of slaves, arise for victory. Mercedes drops the
hand she had risen to hit Tomasa again. Eyes blazing, she turns to face the
group that has formed around Elvira’s bed. We must all stand together. Si-
lence! In the final struggle.” (Chacón 2006, 25) 3

The emblematic hymn emphasizes the need to break with the past; “Del
pasado hay que hacer añicos” (“We have to shatter the past”). But the women
that sing the hymn express an attachment to the recent past and protest
against its compulsory obsolescence required by the Franco regime. Vocaliz-
ing the lyrics in unison provides a way for the prisoners to counter the
massive efforts made in the Francoist prisons to break not only the bodies of
prisoners but also their minds. Together in a choral group, the women carve a
space to collectively stress the need to acknowledge the past and to continue
to believe in the possibility of creating a more just future. This act of remem-
brance and defiance seems to have therapeutic qualities because as they sing
the anthem, both Elvira and Hortensia forget both their physical and emo-
tional pain: “Elvira leads the singing, waving her arms wildly, her hands
rousing the waves of this raging sea. She does not realize her knees have
started to bleed again. For a brief moment, Hortensia forgets the pain in hers
as she sings, looking down at her belly. (Chacón 2006, 25). 4 This prison
scene exemplifies the sentimentality characteristic of nostalgia, experienced
by both the characters and the author.
The Ventas prisoners do not merely recollect “The International”; they
adopt a wistful attitude towards the memories that the song evokes. The song
brings them back to a time before the war was lost. The act of recalling the
communist anthem becomes an act of dissent colored by nostalgia that fos-
ters the kind of stability and sense of identity that the prisoners need to
persevere and maintain their dignity in such degrading circumstances that are
threatening to a coherent sense of self. According to sociologist Janelle Wil-
son: “Nostalgia, in its ability to facilitate continuity of identity, can help to
provide a sanctuary of meaning—a place where one feels she knows herself;
where identity has a safe harbor” (Wilson 2005, 10). Following Wilson, this
scene suggests that the experience of nostalgia both grounds the prisoners
and brings them together.
In another scene, the narrator explicitly describes the relationship be-
tween yearning, hope, and meaning. It takes place after Hortensia is exe-
cuted. Reme is released, and Elvira has escaped. Tomasa is left alone in
prison, accompanied only by memories: “She said the three names in a low
voice, allowing herself to be taken by nostalgia. Hortensia. Elvira. Reme.
126 Chapter 4

Today nostalgia had three names” (Chacón 2006, 194). 5 A longing for the
pre-Francoist past and the subsequent prison experience of bonding become
bound up with one another. Nostalgia grounds the Ventas prisoners and
becomes a vehicle for reinforcing values and for fostering continuity of iden-
tity. In Reminiscing as a Process of Social Construction, J.A. Meacham
emphasizes the community-building function of nostalgic reminiscences:
“they reflect the remembering individual’s membership in and identification
with significant social groups” and “they arouse similar feelings in others
and incite them to cooperative action” (Meacham 1995, 44). Meacham’s
discussion of nostalgia is relevant here because nostalgia for the Ventas
prisoners is a mechanism for reinforcing values, for inspiring motivation, and
for fostering continuity of identity.
This prison scene seeks to convey a sense of camaraderie borne from the
civil war experience and its aftermath rather than the fragmentation that such
circumstances might have produced. Such a rendering begs asking how nos-
talgia might contribute to the overall meaning that the text constructs about
the postwar. This rendering does not convey the sense of alienation rooted in
the postwar, but rather the unshakable moral values and political convictions
of the prisoners. This portrait is at odds with earlier testimonial, novelistic,
and cinematic formulations such as Tomasa Cuevas’s Cárcel de mujeres
(1985) and Julio Llamazares’s Luna de lobos (1985), among others, which
depict the fragmentation of the anti-fascist left and other unromantic chal-
lenges that Republicans faced during the 1940s. While Chacón seeks to stir
silenced voices, the novel arguably reduces women’s experiences and the
multilayered trauma that the war and postwar produced. Readers are faced
with an inherent contradiction; La voz dormida opens a space for dialogue
about women’s diverse experiences of the postwar and the anti-Francoist
resistance, while it simultaneously closes off an exploration into the ambigu-
ities that might challenge a utopic vision of an ideal Republican sisterhood.
Perhaps the best illustration of a hagiographic characterization is of Hor-
tensia, the protagonist and the character that corresponds to the woman that
we find in the emblematic photograph that adorns the cover. It is a photo of a
young woman, wearing a military cap, dangling earrings, and the blue over-
alls known as the “mono azul.” There are several references to this photo in
the novel, such as the time that Felipe (Hortensia’s husband) gazes at the
image. The grainy black and white picture inspires Felipe’s nostalgic desire
to return to the past, to a time when he and his wife were united and eager to
become part of a revolution that had begun with the Second Republic. While
his memories connote a pleasant moment in the past, the fact that he is
removed from that time triggers a profound sense of loss and yearning. He
spends hours peering “into the abyss of losing her” (Chacón 2006, 201) and
tunnels his memory of her into the fractures of his own subjectivity. 6 Horten-
 Postwar Prison Nostalgia 127

sia is kept alive through nostalgic remembrance, inspired by the frozen

photographic image.
This picture, with its antique look and enchanting imagery of a spirited
young revolutionary woman and child, also evokes a sense of nostalgia in the
reader. According to Gina Herrmann, this photograph, “is part of the political
public domain, a propaganda photo that tells a story of revolutionary brav-
ery” (Herrmann 2003, 23). Writing in Voices of the Vanquished: Leftist
Women in the Spanish Civil War Herrmann argues, “The woman is also
holding a child, a significant gesture, proving that the iconographic portrayal
of the woman/ mother/revolutionary corresponds to a certain emotive and
readily tellable myth of female heroism” (Herrmann 2003, 23). This iconic
portrayal of the miliciana was first molded for the public through paintings,
photographs, and war posters that were aimed mostly at a male audience and
were intended as a recruitment device. While the image broke with tradition
by portraying women as active in the war effort, that iconic image did not
necessarily mirror the complex reality of Republican milicianas during the
civil war. As historian Brian Bunk argues, “Although many revolutionary
groups professed the equality of men and women, in practice they exhibited
little difference in their actual treatment of women within the movement”
(Bunk 2007, 126). Certain moments in the novel scratch the surface of these
complex questions, yet they are not fully explored. Hortensia, for instance,
becomes a romanticized, if not stereotypical, figure whose anxieties and
sorrows are never entirely represented in the novel.
These representations substantiate sociologist Elizabeth Jelin’s claim that
“Establishing a group of heroes requires obscuring the actions of others.
Emphasizing certain characteristics and indicators of heroism involves si-
lencing others, especially the errors and missteps by those who are defined as
heroes and must appear ‘immaculate’ in that history” (Jelin 2003, 27). The
author arguably fails to match the complexity of the real human figures that
she attempts to depict. The organization of the Hortensia plot follows the
traditional format of a Christian martyr narrative, including a brief biography
framing Hortensia’s dedication to the revolutionary faith and signaling her
virtuous actions. It concludes with an account of her sacrifices and suffering
because of that devotion. In one flashback, the narrator illustrates the torture
that the civil guards inflicted on Hortensia in order to acquire information
about the clandestine guerilla:

They took her in almost every day, convinced that sooner or later she would
tell them her husband was the Black Jacket, convinced one day she would tell
them where he was. One day Hortensia would grow tired of always going back
and forth and living in fear. But she never grew tired. She did not break. . . .
The only thing she was frightened of was losing her baby. Yes, Hortensia was
brave (Chacón 2006, 12). 7
128 Chapter 4

This fragment details the barbarity of the Nationalist guards, and at the same
time, it underscores the unflinching heroism of the revolutionary woman.
Hortensia becomes a paragon of courage and altruism. She, perhaps more
than any other character, incarnates the ideals for that which the novel dem-
onstrates an overtly idealizing form of nostalgia. Her comments and behav-
iors give readers an image of an ethics and progressive politics that the
author seeks to champion. Significantly, this character evokes the memory of
the real “Trece Rosas,” a group of thirteen young women killed by a Franco-
ist firing squad after the conclusion of the Spanish Civil War as part of a
massive execution campaign.
Documentation and testimonies that detail the death stories of the Trece
Rosas coalesce in the novel with the invented death story of Hortensia. The
Trece Rosas were part of the Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas (JSU), the
socialist youth movement created by the unification of the Socialist and
Communist youth in 1936. After the fall of Madrid in 1939, José Peña Brea
(the leader of the group) was arrested and detained. Under torture, Brea
disclosed the names of his comrades, which led to the arrests of many JSU
members. The Thirteen Roses were among them, later tortured and incarcer-
ated in the Ventas prison. They were then falsely accused and sentenced to
death in August 1939 for aiding a “military rebellion” and for assassinating
Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Gabaldón and his daughter. As Tabea Alexa Lin-
hard asserts in her book Fearless Women of the Mexican Revolution and the
Spanish Civil War, the incongruities in the case suggest that the Trece Rosas
had been, “targeted because of the youth, their gender, and their activism in
the JSU” (Linhard 2005, 136–37).
The Franco regime turned these women into scapegoats, and their brutal
execution served to send a terrifying threat to any dissidents willing to chal-
lenge the system. But, as Linhard shows, their death stories also emerged in
poems and testimonies that lionized the young socialist women. The name
“rosas” becomes a gendered symbol of love, youth, beauty, and innocence.
Particularly the red rose (often associated with Las Trece Rosas) symbolizes
blood, sacrifice, courage, passion, and revolutionary leftist politics. Accord-
ing to Linhard, the themes that surround the death story of the Trece Rosas
include: “(1) a sacrifice for a worthy cause, (2) the motifs of regeneration and
transcendence that correspond to a heroic death, (3) an emphasis on the
innocence of the executed minors, and (4) a radical condemnation of the
brutality of the Francoist regime.” (Linhard 2005, 141–42). Chacón draws
from these themes to render the death story of the fictional character Horten-
sia. The clear allusion to the Thirteen Roses is perhaps one of the most potent
examples of how nostalgia is at play on both the intradiegetic and extradie-
getic levels of the novel, “inside” and “outside” of the world described to the
reader.
 Postwar Prison Nostalgia 129

The characters in La voz dormida remember and name the real Trece
Rosas at a pivotal point in the plot; as they await Hortensia’s execution.
While the Trece Rosas are not actors in the novel per se, they occupy a
mythical space in the collective memory of the characters of the Ventas
prison. Tomasa, for example, recalls the cheerful disposition of the Rosas
during their incarceration at the Ventas prison: “Tomasa recalls Julia Conesa,
bright as a button, Blanquita Brissac playing the harmonium in the chapel at
Ventas, and Martin Barroso’s freckles” (Chacón 2006, 128–29). 8 Elvira joins
Tomasa in her attempt to keep the memory of the Rosas alive as they await
the execution of their prison sister. She remembers seeing them come out of
the chapel in twos, without bowing their heads. She could still hear some of
them, like Julia Conesa, singing. The author’s portrayal of the Trece Rosas
explicitly echoes the testimonies in Fernanda Romeu Alfaro’s El silencio
roto: Mujeres contra el Franquismo (1994). The issue at stake here is not
whether Chacón’s version is based on real accounts, but rather the mythic
quality of the images that surround the young martyrs. For Elvira and the
other imprisoned women, the political struggle and deaths of the Trece Rosas
were not in vain, but instead served as an inspiration for the anti-Francoist
resistance. Nostalgia here functions as a life-giving force and the antidote to
pessimism in the unbearable postwar prison setting.
Particular objects associated with the Trece Rosas also produce nostalgic
memories of the martyrs and thus take on particular significance. Among
them is Joaquina’s belt from an unnamed African country, which was
adorned with twenty-eight little black figurine heads that she distributed
among her fellow prisoners the night before her execution. As Tomasa re-
members her fallen companion, she caresses the small object; “In her pocket
she caresses the little piece of black leather she has kept there since the night
of 4 August 1939. It was the buckle from Joaquina’s belt” (Chacón 2006,
129). 9 The belt conjures a vivid image of Joaquina, one of the real Trece
Rosas. For Tomasa, the figurine from her belt is not only a symbol of a
heroine but also a relic that triggers her memory and offers her a means to
feel close to her and cope with the execution of Hortensia.
In her study of nostalgia, sociologist Janelle Wilson suggests, “Of course
the objects themselves do not possess nostalgia; rather the individual imbues
the objects with meaning such that nostalgia is evoked” (Wilson 2005, 110).
The figurine is a symbol of identity and solidarity. As Sharon Macdonald
posits in Memorylands: Heritage and Identity in Europe Today, “The past is
not only discussed and thought about, it is also materialized in bodies, things,
buildings and places. It is felt, experienced and expressed through objects,
such as ruined buildings, monuments . . . and practices, such as commemora-
tive rituals, historical reenactment” (Macdonald 2013, 79). In the novel, read-
ers see the relationship between sensory functions (particularly touch), the
materiality of the object (the figurine) that triggers memories of significant
130 Chapter 4

others and shared experiences, and emotional responses. Each piece of the
belt serves as a mnemonic tool that contributes to the continuity of the
memory of Joaquina as well as the collective struggle and sacrifice of anti-
Francoist women in general.
Julia Conesa’s real farewell letter is another central mnemonic object that
evokes an embodied nostalgic response in the fictional world of the postwar
characters, and beyond that world, namely, the post-dictatorial context in
which the story is written. Similar to the case of El corazón helado, this letter
contains a certain sacred quality; it is an authentic document that tells a story
of sacrifice and ends with a plea; “Que mi nombre no se borre de la historia”
(Chacón 2002, 199) [“Don’t let my name be erased from history”; Chacón
2006, 134]. Elvira recalls Julia Conesa’s letter as she awaits Hortensia’s
execution. The nostalgia that Elvira experiences as she remembers Conesa’s
message, however, bespeaks the author’s own sense of loss and longing. In
the acknowledgements, Chacón expresses her gratitude to Fernanda Romeu
Alfaro who shared Conesa’s original letter with her. The meaning that the
document acquires for the characters in the novel, as well as the author,
demonstrates how artifacts foster an affective connection to the past. Signifi-
cantly, the letter appears reproduced in its entirety in the novel. The message
is followed by the words, “No, el nombre de Julia Conesa no se borrará en la
historia” (Chacón 2002, 199) [”No, the name of Julia Conesa will not be
erased from History”; Chacón 2006, 134]. The reproduction of this letter
serves as a tribute to the memory of Conesa and an appeal to remember the
struggles that anti-fascist women faced after the war.
While these references to the Trece Rosas are explicit, there are also
indirect references to the young communist martyrs. The testimonies about
the execution of the Trece Rosas that Romeu Alfaro cites in El silencio roto:
Mujeres contra el Franquismo (1994) correspond almost directly to Horten-
sia’s execution scene in the novel. As Linhard notes, in these testimonies, the
execution of the Trece Rosas, “becomes an emblematic event in the history
of women’s resistance to Francoism” (Linhard 2005, 143). Romeu Alfaro
cites Antoñita García, who witnessed the last hours of the thirteen minors:
“The minors in my unit that were shot were amazingly brave. The hours that
they were in the chapel, they sang revolutionary songs and handed out per-
sonal things, and wrote letters” (Romeu Alfaro 1994, 40, my translation). 10
Romeu Alfaro also cites a document originally published by the French
Communist Party in 1947. This document details the deaths of the thirteen
martyrs:

The young women, showing an admirable serenity, distributed their

clothes. . . . They comforted the other inmates who were crying and said they
were happy to give their lives for a just cause. When the Falangist executioners
 Postwar Prison Nostalgia 131

came, the thirteen minors went out shouting “Long live the Republic” (Romeu
Alfaro 1994, 42, my translation). 11

This narrative bears a striking resemblance to the one describing Hortensia’s

death. Like the thirteen youths, Hortensia’s death story does not reveal signs
of fear, anger, regret, or anxiety on the day of her execution: “They say that
in the first light of that morning, Hortensia stared straight at the firing squad,
as they all did. Long live the Republic!” (Chacón 2006, 149). 12 Even more
explicit is the description of Hortensia’s steadfast strength of character mo-
ments before her execution, which took place shortly after her daughter was
born:

They say the new guard went with her to the chapel and sat outside all night
with the baby. And that the little girl couldn’t stop crying because she was so
hungry, the poor thing. And the priest tried to convince her to confess and take
communion. He told her his duty was to save her soul, and that if she made
peace with God he would allow her to breastfeed her baby. But she would not
confess or take communion: her convictions were more deep-rooted even than
her deepest feelings (Chacón 2006, 148–49). 13

This passage shows the character’s steadfast resistance to the nexus between
the Church and the State and their attempt to control women and their bodies.
This characterization shows how nostalgia for a revolutionary epoch, and the
imagined paragons of integrity that populated it, hinges upon the reconstruc-
tion of oppositional identities. The setting and characters that fill these loca-
tions become instrumental in a critique of the interrelated workings of relig-
ious fanaticism, sexism, and imperial notions of the state that legitimized acts
of political and gendered violence. By identifying how Chacón cross-exam-
ines such “othering,” we attend to the multiple dimensions of memorial
representation. But what this passage fails to reveal is the potential anxiety
that such experiences produce. Hortensia’s unwavering refusal of the priest’s
bargain suggests that her political consciousness and commitment remained
unaltered even in her final moments. Through this gesture, the text proclaims
in quasi-religious terms that Hortensia was wedded to her faith in commu-
nism and ready to sacrifice her life for the cause. She is at peace with her fate
as a martyr. One of her final deeds is writing a farewell letter, in which she
encourages her daughter to continue the struggle: “Fight daughter, and go on
fighting as your mother is fighting, and as your father is fighting. It is our
duty, even if we pay with our lives” (Chacón 2006, 247). 14 Her death is a
violent and untimely tragedy, but at the same time, it is a meaningful act of
political sacrifice. Tensi, who is adopted by her aunt Pepita, later cherishes
the letters, the journals, and the blunt pencil that her mother leaves to her.
These nostalgia-provoking gifts help to facilitate continuity of identity by
keeping Tensi connected to her mother. The act of reading the journals is an
132 Chapter 4

act of bonding. She feels as if her mother is with her and that they are united
through the written word. Hortensia’s journals become not only an heirloom
but a tool to incite action against the oppression of silence under the regime.
The image of the pencil evokes the epigraph by Cesar Vallejo preceding
Hortensia’s execution: “If you see nobody, if you are afraid of the blunt
pencils, if mother Spain falls—just a thought—off you go, children of the
world, off you go to find her” (Chacón 2006, 151). 15 Chacón and Vallejo
long to guide us back to a time and a place of authenticity and solidarity. The
pencil is an object of nostalgic return, symbolizing the expression of Repub-
lican ideals. A blunt pencil, however, is one that struggles to perform its duty
as it has been silenced. The pencil that Hortensia leaves behind for Tensi is
worn because she wrote feverishly what she could not say aloud. The pencil
remains unsharpened because the owner was silenced, but the pencil, in the
hands of young Tensi, represents the continuation of the struggle.
The author’s nostalgia manifests itself in characterizations and symbols
(the belt, the pencil). At its core, the pencil is a life-giving tool. Eventually,
Tensi joins the Communist Party and carries her mother’s convictions into
the future. The Hortensia plot consciously attempts to turn a tragic story of
execution into a narrative of hope and the survival of ideals. Chacón effec-
tively dramatizes Marianne Hirsch and Nancy K. Miller’s claim that the
longing to return combines with “a need to redress an injustice, one often
inflicted upon an entire group of people caused by displacement or dispos-
session, the loss of home and of family autonomy, the conditions of expul-
sion, colonization, and migration” (Hirsh and Miller 2011, 7). The novel is
guided by the belief that testimonies can be used to rectify the distortions of
the Francoist hegemonic story and that remembrance is not an unavailing
retreat into the past, but a valuable means to gain cultural and political
identity. Tensi’s political commitment represents a successful transgenera-
tional transmission of memory because she accepts her mother’s past and
finds it useful in the present.
While she does have direct memories of the war, Tensi possesses what
Hirsch, considers “postmemory,” a concept that I alluded to in the introduc-
tion. In Family Frames (1997) Hirsch contends, “Postmemory characterizes
the experience of those who grew up dominated by narratives that preceded
their birth, whose own belated stories are evacuated by the stories of the
previous generation shaped by traumatic events” (Hirsch 1997, 22). Horten-
sia’s letters and journals provide Tensi with a postmemory of the war and
hence give her a foundation and a sense of purpose. It is precisely this kind of
transgenerational transmission that the novel seeks to engender. In other
words, the novel attempts to achieve in the present “real” world what the
letter produces in the fictional world. La voz dormida is the medium through
which the author attempts to bring Republican testimonies of the Francoist
past into the public sphere and to convey a link in the present to a Republican
 Postwar Prison Nostalgia 133

identity and tradition once repressed under the dictatorship and disregarded
in the post-dictatorial period.
On the one hand, the framing of these overlapping death stories could be
read as a type of “radical nostalgia” to borrow a term from Peter Glazer, who
examines the commemorative gatherings and performances among the Abra-
ham Lincoln Brigades. In his book Radical Nostalgia (2005), Glazer makes a
case for the progressive potential of nostalgia, arguing, “The veterans’ com-
memorative performances create a historically and emotionally resonant
space, in opposition to the mainstream culture at large, where their radical
politics may be celebrated. In this context, the veterans and their supporters
can look to the past for what they lack in the present, seize it, and perhaps
carry it forward” (Glazer 2005, 37). For Glazer, radical nostalgia is creative
because it refuses to remain trapped in a melancholic reification of the past.
Drawing from Glazer’s insights, one could argue that Chacón establishes a
counter-narrative that bears witness to the women’s violent deaths, and in
doing so, creates an emotionally resonant space in opposition to Francoism.
The insertion of these death stories in the novel could be read as a vehicle
that might carry these memories forward to defend a particular identity and
politics in the present at variance with the Francoist past.
But there is a more critical way to read the Trece Rosas intertext in La voz
dormida: the narrative recovers the repressed Republican stories behind the
Francoist nostalgic mythification by means of further nostalgic leftist myth-
ification. In State Repression and the Labors of Memory Elizabeth Jelin
argues, “Simplified Manichean schemes without “gray areas” or fissures are
more easily transmitted than interpretations that are more polysemous and
that allow for multiple meanings and interpretations” (Jelin 2003, 98). The
myth that Chacón conceptualizes celebrates the civil war as a meaningful
battle that sought to stem the tide of fascism that had engulfed Spain. This
discursive re-inscription constitutes an example of the purpose of myth if, as
Labanyi contends, myth gives the impression of objectivity while it rejects
ambiguity and the possibility of alternatives, creating a stable—simplified—
world of essential and unchanging values. “Myth is concerned with the eter-
nal and the universal, and attempts to neutralize change; history is concerned
with the temporal and the particular, and stresses the importance of change”
(Labanyi 1989, 33). From this critical perspective, the novel constitutes an
easily communicated narrative about the postwar that diminishes the plural-
ity of experiences of Republican women and frames their deaths using tem-
plates of martyrdom.
If Hortensia represents the ideal example of an ethical subjectivity, then
Elvira symbolizes her younger counterpart. At sixteen, she is sent to the
Ventas prison, and it is there where she learns commitment, solidarity, and
strength through the exemplary models of Hortensia, Reme, and Tomasa.
Elvira soon escapes the prison and joins her brother in the Cerro Umbría—
134 Chapter 4

the rugged hills that concealed the armed resistance groups. The conditions
are harsh, but she shows exceptional courage. The narrator notes that while
Felipe (one of the members of the guerrilla and Hortensia’s widower) does
not approve of women taking part in combat, he soon accepts Elvira because
of her bravery and knowledge of weapons:

By now she could use them all, but she preferred her own little pistol, which
she carried stuck to her belt. Besides she had political training, and was far
better instructed than most of the guerrilla fighters in their band. She had learnt
all she knew about politics in Ventas goal. And in the field classes she taught
the men who couldn’t read or write. She was intelligent too, and at sixteen
knew a lot more than many who die of old age. And she was tough. In less than
a month, she had got over the fever that always came on in the evenings. . . .
She took deep breaths of the mountain air, carried her haversack and rifle like
all the others, and never complained on their record marches. She didn’t fall
over once when they had to walk backwards through the snow to put any
pursuers off their trail. (Chacón 2006, 178) 16

The focus on Elvira’s strength and ability to use weapons reveals the author's
attempt to portray a revolutionary woman who directly opposed old patterns
and conservative gender roles. The author recognizes that such norms per-
sisted on the political Left despite the gains of the Republic. In her confronta-
tions with other guerrilla fighters, Elvira assertively points out their obstina-
cy for not embracing the true equality for which the Party could strive. When
Felipe (aka Mateo) insists that the Party could only function with the domi-
nance of men, she rebuffs his patriarchal thinking: “You didn’t learn a thing
from the Republic, Mateo, men aren’t our lords and masters anymore“
(Chacón 2006, 179). 17 This critique of sexism and ideological contradiction
is one important instance of attenuation of an otherwise flawless character-
ization of the Republican side. Notwithstanding, the Elvira plot mostly main-
tains assumptions surrounding gender and sexuality in the context of the war
and after.
By becoming involved in the guerrilla, Elvira takes a combative role that
previously had been solely the domain of men, thereby directly challenging
the male role as resilient, astute, and self-reliant. However, despite her role as
a combatant, Elvira’s actions and appearance conform to traditional gender
stereotypes. The depiction of Elvira’s beauty, femininity, and innocence rein-
forces gender roles throughout the novel and particularly when she is in the
guerrilla. Although Elvira carried weapons and knew how to operate them,
she preferred the dainty one, and there is never mention that she actually used
them during any fighting. That detail indicates a desire to counteract the
unsettling image of a masculinized woman. Eventually, she becomes a leader
in the anti-Franco resistance in exile and gains status as she is considered “as
much a man as her brother” (Chacón 2006, 195). Elvira’s story attempts to
 Postwar Prison Nostalgia 135

tell readers about the psychology of women in the clandestine guerrilla

movement, how they viewed themselves, and how they viewed each other.
However, the author does not expose the deeper anxieties that involvement in
armed conflict might produce for both men and women. Instead, what we
have is a larger-than-life heroine based on binary gender stereotypes and
heteronormative expectations. Elvira embodies an unproblematized concep-
tion of leftist ideals and values for which the author demonstrates a restora-
tive nostalgia.

NOSTALGIA AS A TOOL

Perhaps what makes this restorative nostalgic reconstruction most problemat-

ic is what it tends to silence. This streamlined narrative evacuates the vexing
and messy questions produced by the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, the
morally ambiguous situations that the postwar created, and the unromantic
aftermath in its wake. It is also significant that negative characterizations of
militarized female prison guards function as a counterpoint to the idealized
characterizations and plotlines of the Republican prisoners. Contrasting with
the portrait of prisoners, Chacón describes the prison guard named Mercedes
in binary terms of good and evil. She is described as a lizard who will soon
learn the evil ways of the other prison guards “La Veneno” (“Miss Poison”)
and “La Zapatones” (“Big Boots”). The text refers to the Nationalists in
animalistic terms, which is ironically reminiscent of the Francoist discourse.
As Paul Preston suggests, the regime’s left-wing adversaries were always
portrayed as subhuman, filthy, depraved, and criminal; “This language jus-
tified the need for ‘purification,’ a euphemism for the most sweeping physi-
cal, economic and psychological repression” (Preston 2006, 305). After the
war, the regime established an investigation called the “Causa General,” with
the aim to gather evidence of Republican criminality. As noted by Helen
Graham, “The main message of the Causa General was that the atrocities
had been committed only by Republicans and endured only by Franco sup-
porters” (Graham 2005, 133). Such historical context problematizes
Chacón’s language, which seems to project a dualistic image that ultimately
runs the risk replacing one monologic discourse with another.
Returning to Horowitz, “Such ways of recollecting are nostalgic in posit-
ing in the historical past values and qualities longed for in the present, such
as pride in one’s heritage and moral certainty” (Horowitz 2010, 46). The
golden hue of nostalgia in La voz dormida mostly disallows for the break-
through of uncomfortable dissonant recollections of the harshest postwar
realities and their gendered underpinnings. The author’s selection of stories
may be interpreted as an evasion of uncomfortable zones of memory, a
conscious or subconscious effort to steer clear of any narrative derailment of
136 Chapter 4

the mythical portrait of the survivors. Since Chacón lacks direct memories of
the war and early postwar, her narrative may also be interpreted as a vehicle
for the communication of the selective memories of the survivors that she
either read or heard. From either perspective, Chacón recounts heroic epi-
sodes of women’s resistance that deeply move readers, but also constrain the
boundaries of our understanding of postwar state violence against women.
By analyzing Chacón’s novel alongside others in this book, we gain a
deeper understanding of nostalgia’s multiple forms and how they shape rep-
resentations of women’s experiences of war and repression. This study al-
lows us to consider what might be lost and what might be gained through an
idealizing lens of restorative nostalgia. While my analysis has conveyed
concerns about what Chacón’s nostalgia conceals or reduces, it has also
attempted to emphasize the novel's significance. La voz dormida invites read-
ers to move beyond gender-blind interpretations of the past by focusing on
women. In doing so, it complicates masculinist narratives of the anti-Franco
resistance that center entirely on men. In its vindication of women’s voices,
the novel not only illuminates how gender has shaped political repression
and resilience, but also how gender shapes nostalgia itself. The narrative
provides readers an opportunity to think about the intersections between
nostalgic longing and the construction of identity.
An analysis of Chacón’s book also offers readers insight into nostalgia’s
multiple functions. As an affective form of memory, nostalgia mitigates trau-
matic experiences and thus works as a coping mechanism in the context of
adversity. It is a vehicle for reinforcing values, for inspiring motivation, and
for fostering the development of knowledge. The novel serves to invite re-
flection upon the junctions between the emotional and the nostalgic and how
these might contribute to new forms of knowledge. Literature communicates
emotional ways of remembering, allowing readers to consider how we come
to understand and feel about the past. Finally, Chacón’s nostalgic depiction
of female characters shows the galvanizing potential of this form of nostalgia
as the novel has inspired authors and activists across generations, many of
whom have introduced readers to the subtleties of historical developments
and their entrenched classist and sexist foundations. As I indicated earlier, La
voz dormida may be considered a forerunner of numerous works dedicated to
the representation of women’s struggles in the war and postwar. In the
decade following the publication of La voz dormida, Almudena Grandes
published El corazón helado (2007) and El lector de Julio Verne (2012), two
novels that I examine in the following chapter. With a keen awareness of
complexity and contradiction, Grandes builds on the foundation established
by Chacón and foregrounds the multilayered struggles of marginalized Re-
publican women thereby vindicating a cultural continuity while expanding
our grasp of a profoundly complex historical moment and its numerous lega-
cies in the present.
 Postwar Prison Nostalgia 137

NOTES

1. López Quiñones dedicates one chapter of his book La guerra persistente (2006) to the
concept of utopia in contemporary Spanish narrative. See the chapter “La utopía retrospectiva:
La Segunda República o la nostalgia por un pasado mejor.”
2. ”Tiña, tifus piojos, chinches, disentería, esto es una indecencia. No, no le interesa a
Hortensia en este momento. . . . Ella sólo quiere recordar un beso. Un beso furtivo, el último
que le arrancó a Felipe en Cerro Umbría” (Chacón 2002, 133).
3. ”Atruena la razón en marcha. El trío continúa cantando a medio tono. Tomasa se suma
al himno. Del pasado hay que hacer añicos. Las demás internas de la galería corean a sus
compañeras. . . . Legión esclava, en pie, a vencer. Mercedes retira la amenaza, deja caer la
mano cernía sobre el rostro de Tomasa y con furor se gira hacia el grupo que se ha formado
alrededor del petate de Elvira. Agrupémonos todos. ¡Silencio! En la lucha final (Chacón 2002,
45–47).
4. ”Elvira dirige el canto con los brazos sin poder controlar la emoción, alzando con sus
manos el oleaje de un mar puesto en pie, sin advertir que le sangran de nuevo las rodillas. Y
Hortensia olvida por un momento el dolor de las suyas y canta mirándose el vientre” (Chacón
2002, 46).
5. Pronunció tres nombres en voz baja, para dejarse llevar por la añoranza. Hortensia.
Elvira. Reme. Porque la añoranza hoy tiene tres nombres” (Chacón 2002, 284)
6. Teaching Chacón’s novel first at Indiana State University and later at Keene State
College was helpful in the development of this chapter. I thank the students of my honors
course “Revolution and War in Spain,” notably Jewel Bean whose insightful comments in class
inspired this notion of “tunneling” memory.
7. “Casi a diario se la llevaban, creyendo que un día les iba a decir que su marido estaba
con El Chaqueta Negra, creyendo que un día les iba a decir dónde estaba. Un día, Hortensia se
iba a cansar de tanto ir y venir con el miedo a cuestas. Pero no se cansó. Ella soportó lo
suyo. . . . Sólo temió perder al hijo que esperaba. Hortensia era valiente” (Chacón 2002, 26).
8. “Y Tomasa recuerda a Julita Conesa, alegre como un cascabel, a Blanquita Brissac
tocando el armonio en la capilla de Ventas, y las pecas de Martina Barroso” (Chacón 2002,
192).
9. “Y acaricia en su bolsillo la cabecita negra que guarda desde la noche del cuarto de
agosto de mil novecientos treinta y nueve. Pertenecía al cinturón de Joaquina” (Chacón 2002,
192).
10. “Las menores de mi expediente que fusilaron fueron maravillosamente valientes. Las
horas que estuvieron en “capilla” cantaron canciones revolucionarias y repartieron cosas perso-
nales, escribieron cartas” (Romeu Alfaro 1994, 40).
11. “Las jóvenes, dando pruebas de una serenidad admirable, distribuyeron sus ropas. . . .
Consolaron a las otras reclusas que lloraban y aseguraron que se sentían felices de dar su vida
por una causa justa. Cuando los verdugos falangistas vinieron, las 13 jóvenes menores salieron
gritando “Viva la República” (Romeu Alfaro 1994, 42).
12. “Cuentan que aquella madrugada, Hortensia miró de frente al piquete, como todos.
‘¡Viva la República!’” (Chacón 2002, 220).
13. “Dicen que la nueva la acompañó a la capilla y se quedó fuera con la hija toda la noche.
Y que la niña no paró de berrear de hambre, criatura. Y que el cura la quiso convencer para que
confesara y comulgara. Le dijo que su deber era salvarle el alma, y que si se ponía en orden con
Dios le dejaba que le diera la teta a la niña. Pero ni confesó ni comulgó, no consintió, esa mujer
tenía los principios más hondos que el propio corazón” (Chacón 2002, 219).
14. “Lucha, hija mía, lucha siempre, como lucha tu madre, como lucha tu padre, que es
nuestro deber, aunque nos cueste la vida” (Chacón 2002, 357).
15. “Si no veis a nadie, si os asustan los lápices sin punta, si la madre España cae—digo, es
un decir—salid, niños del mundo, id a buscarla” (Chacón 2002, 225).
16. “Podría manejar cualquiera, aunque ella prefería su pistolita, una pequeña pistola que
llevaba al cinto. Además tenía formación política, mucho más avanzada que la mayoría de los
guerrilleros de la partida. En la cárcel había aprendido todo lo que sabía de política. Y en la
escuela de campaña daba clases a los hombres que no sabían leer ni escribir. Era lista, a los
138 Chapter 4

dieciséis sabía más que muchos que mueren viejos. Y era fuerte. No había tardado ni un mes en
curarse de la fiebre que le subía por las tardes. . . . Respiraba el aire del monte con ansia y
aunque parecía una mosca, cargaba con el macuto y el fusil y no se quejaba nunca en las
marchas. Ni siquiera tropezó una sola vez cuando debían caminar de espaldas en la nieve para
despistar con las huellas“ (Chacón 2002, 261).
17. “No has aprendido nada de la República, Mateo, los tiempos de los señoritos se acaba-
ron” (Chacón 2002, 263).
 Chapter Five

Nostalgia and Inner Exile in Almudena

Grandes’s Spain

Nostalgia and exile are experiences that are often considered together
since exile involves the expulsion from one’s homeland, and nostalgia often
arises from homesickness. As the introduction to Unsettling Nostalgia sug-
gests, Spanish and Chilean authors forced into exile wrote a remarkable
number of novels and memoirs about the divides produced by the military
coups and the longing that physical separation causes. In the essay “The
Exile’s Dilemma: Writing the Civil War From Elsewhere,” Sebastiaan Faber
explains, “For intellectuals and nonintellectuals alike, writing became a way
to deal with their multiple loss—losing the war, losing friends and family,
but also losing a sense of identity and purpose in life” (Faber 2007, 342). But
it is also true that thousands of dissidents never left Spain and experienced an
internal exile, enduring disconnection and loss within their own homelands.
In his 1980 study Literature and Inner Exile: Authoritarian Spain
1939–1975, Paul Ilie defined inner exile as an isolating psychological state
more than a geographic one (Ilie 1980, 2). For Ilie, “inner exile is an empti-
ness that awaits restoration, much the same way that territorial exile is the
absence that compensates itself by nostalgia and hopeful anticipation” (Ilie
1980, 14). The writings of predominantly male intellectuals (Marsé, Goytiso-
lo, Benet) offer Ilie a window to define the features of inner exile, which
involve political disenfranchisement, physical and economic hardship, and
the mental suffering produced by the identification with values in conflict
with the prevailing ones.
In the article “Passivity and Immobility: Patterns of Inner Exile in Post-
war Spanish Novels Written by Women,” Phyllis Zatlin expands the concept
by examining representations of nonconformist adolescent women within a
traditional, male-dominated society. By tracing patterns of alienated young
139
140 Chapter 5

protagonists in Spanish postwar novels written by authors including Carmen

Laforet (1921–2004), Ana María Matute (1925–2014) and Carmen Martín
Gaite (1925–2000), Zatlin persuasively argues that these writers construct a
heroine who is a self-conscious inner exile. These 1940s female figures have
“a clear sense of being excluded from the relative freedom of masculine
culture, but also of being alienated socially and politically” (Zatlin 1988, 3).
In other words, for women, inner exile had multiple dimensions emerging
from the intersections of identity and marked by historical processes through
which their bodies became sites for male dominance and control. Zatlin’s
gendered approach to the theme of inner exile, and her argument that these
authors present a powerful message of political protest serves as a point of
entry for an analysis of a generation of women writers in Spain that came
after the war generation.
This chapter moves beyond previous conceptualizations of inner exile by
examining how a nostalgic lens tints the postwar experience of political and
gendered alienation in recent post-dictatorial literature by women of a young-
er generation. Whereas early postwar novelists like Matute and Laforet most-
ly conveyed a dismal vision of the here-and-now, many contemporary au-
thors project a nostalgic image of postwar resistance. In this analysis, I will
focus on the writer Almudena Grandes (b. 1960) who did not experience the
Spanish Civil War firsthand, nor did she live through the most violent Franco
years as an adult woman like her predecessors. Nevertheless, Grandes, simi-
lar to Dulce Chacón (1954–2003) and Carolina Astudillo (b. 1975), grew up
within a culture dominated by a dictatorial narrative that perpetuated the
marginalization and suffering of leftist women. Over two decades after the
death of Franco, at a time when many authors began to produce counter-
narratives through fiction and film, Chacón, Grandes, and Astudillo entered
the memory debate with an attentiveness to the concrete challenges facing
women who had supported the Second Republic and who were forced to live
within the transformed landscape of the Franco Regime.
If we juxtapose the novels of Laforet, Matute, and Gaite with the stories
of Grandes and Chacón, we might trace a generational difference and con-
clude that temporal distance plays an overwhelming role in the development
of nostalgic perspectives. As Zatlin argues, typically the protagonist in these
earlier novels is “orphaned and treated as an outcast by her relatives; she
resents the privileges of her male cousins; she is a solitary individual, ill at
ease with almost everyone” (3). In contrast with these arguably anti-nostalgic
authors, Grandes and Chacón create assertive female characters whose
strength increases within communities of women where friendship is forged
in the context of adversity. That said, viewed alongside Dulce Chacón’s La
voz dormida, Grandes’s novels offer a comparatively fuller portrait of the
postwar as they depict the multiple traumas stemming from militaristic cul-
ture and shed new light on the role of gender hierarchies in the making of
 Nostalgia and Inner Exile in Almudena Grandes’s Spain 141

dictatorial violence. In this way, Grandes finds a striking counterpart in the

Chilean filmmakers Carmen Castillo and Carolina Astudillo, whose films
delve deep into the complexities of longing for resistance.
In what follows, I will offer a close reading of the novels El corazón
helado (2007) and El lector de Julio Verne (2012) to address the particular
ways in which an unsettling form of nostalgia is structured and functions in
these texts set in the context of inner exile. This comparative study of differ-
ent contemporary nostalgias addresses questions concerning the variation of
form and the effects of that contrast. By reframing the history of postwar
suffering, Grandes gives rise to a new way of interpreting the past that
extends the concept of exile and sharpens our awareness of the regime’s
social categories and structural injustice. Through the voice of the narrators,
the author also envisions the promise of an emergent community that might
incorporate the legacies of resistance in the present. Nostalgia thus becomes
a valuable tool to reclaim a history of resistance while bringing out its pro-
found complexities.

ALMUDENA GRANDES AND THE WEB OF

NOSTALGIC MEMORY

I want to begin with an examination of the Almudena Grandes website (http:/

/www.almudenagrandes.com) since it visually conveys the unsettling nostal-
gia that underpins the author’s most recent novels: El corazón helado, Inés y
la alegría, El lector de Julio Verne, Las tres bodas de Manolita and Los
pacientes del Doctor García. The last four titles listed here constitute the
volumes in an ongoing series of historical novels tied together formally as
Episodios de una guerra interminable (Episodes of a Never-ending War)—a
title evocative of the Episodios Nacionales by Benito Perez Galdós. Building
on the legacy of the nineteenth-century author, Grandes traces the bridges
between the Spanish Civil War, the Franco period and the neoliberal present.
The virtual venue for the marketing of the novels offers an audiovisual meta-
phor of the author’s understanding of return. The website underscores the
tensions between past and present, joining new technology with the old,
combining era-specific photographs, historiographies, and maps with recent
interviews and book trailers. Through this computer-generated maze, the
author elicits a reflection on the context of division, persecution, and multi-
ple forms of exile, including one that takes place outside one’s homeland and
the other within it.
If the website interviews related to El lector de Julio Verne deliver rele-
vant information that contextualizes the author’s research process, then the
display of photographs associated with El corazón helado and the corre-
sponding sound effects, which simulate a 1950s-style Kodak Carousel slide
142 Chapter 5

projector, render visible the author’s vision of memory. The ten images fol-
low a chronological sequence, beginning with a picture of war-torn Spain,
followed by one shot evoking diaspora, then framing the focal point of the
author’s work—Spain under Franco. The slideshow finally ends with a color-
ized image of the transition, featuring several generations of Spaniards. The
sound of the carousel that overlays this visual material dramatically shapes
how we see and understand the images. The click evokes memories of home
and family entertainment—a social experience that has become virtually ob-
solete. First patented in the mid-1960s, the Kodak Company nostalgically
named the projector “carousel” to give consumers the alluring idea that they
could journey back in time and through the memories of their youth.
But the loss and longing evoked by this montage cannot be reduced to
mere sentimentality. Significantly, the focusing lens oscillates between sharp
and blurred images, many of which are damaged. Faces are blotched out or
faded, inviting viewers to reflect upon the passage of time and on the limita-
tions of the archive. These photos are not unfiltered records of history; they
selectively spotlight subjects and landscapes, they reveal imperfections and
absences; and finally, they change over time. The presentation of these
photos opens a window to the author’s conception of the nature of memory.
To use Jo Labanyi’s terms, memory is framed as “the afterlife of the past in
the present” (Labanyi 2007, 193). The author thus positions herself as a
memorialist that uses the archive along with the imagination to narrate the
elusive past and catalyze new thinking about it.
The unsettling nostalgic perspective that the author conveys through the
image of the Kodak Carousel on her website is heightened by the subtext that
appears at the foot of each photo. Written in old courier style font, the subtext
draws viewers into a reflection on childhood, trauma, and trans-generational
communication of memory:

There are stories that our parents and grandparents never wanted to tell us.
Some because they were so heroic they knew we could not accept their out-
come, and others because they were so terrible we could never forgive them;
stories that seem unbelievable, but ultimately have been true; stories that
would freeze one’s heart. 1

Recalling the well-known Antonio Machado poem LIII in Proverbios y can-

tares (1912) (Campos de Castilla), Grandes magnifies Spain’s splintered
political history and prompts viewers to think critically about the emotional
challenges of remembrance and return. I begin with the Almudena Grandes
website because it conveys a longing to reclaim an identity in direct opposi-
tion to National-Catholic ideology. Authors like Grandes reshape otherwise
disheartening stories of dictatorial repression into compelling narratives of
resistance that serve as a source of inspiration and a model for cultural and
 Nostalgia and Inner Exile in Almudena Grandes’s Spain 143

political renewal. Understood in this way, the 1930s becomes a site of roots
and potential connection. Readers witness the suffering produced by Franco-
ist forces, but a sense of community shapes the oppressed groups that popu-
late that past.
It is significant that the author’s image of the past contrasts sharply with
her vision of the present. As I underscored in the introduction to this book,
nostalgia often conveys more about the disenchantment with the here-and-
now than it does about yesteryear. In 2008, Grandes published a dialogue
with Gaspar Llamazares—the former leader of the leftist coalition la Izquier-
da Unida. In the exchange, both Grandes and Llamazares vindicate the values
of the Second Republic against what they view as Spain’s current cultural
ethos of consumerism, apathy, and individualism. Their reflections on de-
tachment and reconnection with Spain’s Republican history coalesce with a
denouncement of governmental policies involving the privatization of health-
care and education. They point to the persistence of economic exploitation
and claim that its continued existence needs principled resistance from the
left just as it did in the 1930s. Grandes calls for a day of observance to mark
the proclamation of the Second Republic—April 14, 1931. In doing so, she
voices the need for continuity with the revolutionary projects of the 1930s.
Reading these statements alongside her work, we can extract illuminating
perspectives on the relationship between historical thought, nostalgic repre-
sentation, and the shaping of modern Spanish political collectivities.

UNFREEZING AND UNSETTLING HEARTS

Spanning a full century from 1900–2005, El corazón helado (2007) is an epic

novel that traces the interconnected stories of two families, one associated
with the Franco regime and the other with the Second Republic. The narra-
tive takes readers from a first-person account set in the post-dictatorial
present to a third person account set during the Spanish Civil War and post-
war. These temporal shifts and multiple voices allow the author to construct a
highly nuanced portrait of the political roots that engendered the Spanish
Civil War generation, as well as their progeny. These narrative strategies also
serve to bring out the winding and equivocal nature of memory as the charac-
ters and the reader discover past events in unchronological order. Sarah
Leggott sums it up as “a narrative technique that subverts any notion that
recuperating the past is a straightforward endeavor, highlighting, rather the
complexities inherent in the process” (Leggott 2015, 113). As I see it, the
exposure of memory’s mechanisms and the meditation on omissions, disso-
nance, and yearning are part and parcel of an unsettling form of nostalgia that
I have defined throughout this book.
144 Chapter 5

The sites and contexts in which nostalgia for the Second Republic are
experienced are both within the 1940s exilic communities in France in the
immediate postwar, as well as in the 2005 “point of telling.” In exile, nostal-
gia emerges as republican families form social networks and nourish their
political ideologies. The first-person narrator, named Álvaro Carrión Otero,
also experiences nostalgia in 2005 as he pieces together his own genealogy
and discovers the hidden revolutionary politics of his paternal grandmother
and the conservative forces that imprisoned her and prematurely ended her
struggle. The novel takes readers on the protagonist’s quest to gain critical
consciousness through an engagement with memory. He discovers his link to
both the feminist efforts of the Second Republic (symbolized by his paternal
grandmother), as well as the misogynist and classist oppression unleashed by
the hijacking of the Republic and sanctioned by the Franco regime (ex-
pressed by his father). Throughout the novel, the protagonist increasingly
identifies with his forward-thinking lineage that was subjugated in patriar-
chy, while he distances himself from his National-Catholic roots. Crucial in
this process is also the figure of Raquel, who leads Álvaro to the painful
recognition of his family’s responsibility for egregious injustices, including
the theft of Republican lands. By ultimately positioning these two main
characters as self-identified with the Second Republic, Grandes portrays
complex negotiations with the past that result in the construction of an iden-
tity at odds with the Francoist hegemonic story and its lingering social and
economic structures in the present.
As one of the most ambitious contemporary novels of memory, El
corazón helado requires two intersecting genealogical trees of families
marked by bonds and fractures. It charts ideological battles complicated by
various forms of exile and by intergenerational differences between Civil
War survivors born before the Second Republic and their children born dur-
ing the dictatorship. My discussion in the first half of this chapter highlights
how El corazón helado adopts an unsettling nostalgic lens to explore a range
of often ignored aspects of women’s lives during twentieth-century Spain.
These include the asymmetrical relations that have governed family life, the
empowering experience of education, the misogynist backlash against wom-
en’s political mobilization and sexual liberation, and the economic and gen-
dered systems of domination that have shaped prostitution. The novel em-
phasizes the centrality of gender and sexuality in debates about Spanish
identity and modernization during the Second Republic and the ongoing role
of gender in the aftermath of the war and military rule. Similar to La voz
dormida, El corazón helado conveys a nostalgic vindication of leftist middle
and working-class women whose loss was manifold; but unlike Chacón,
Grandes spotlights the fraught negotiation of gender roles in the context of
twentieth-century Spain and the limitations, contradictions, and anxieties that
women faced as they challenged patriarchy.
 Nostalgia and Inner Exile in Almudena Grandes’s Spain 145

This novel, comprising over nine hundred pages, offers a wealth of op-
portunities to explore the experience, representation, and gendered underpin-
nings of nostalgia. Exploring all of them would exceed the reach of this
chapter; therefore, I will have to limit my scope and leave other areas open
for future analysis. I will concentrate on the story of the narrator’s paternal
grandmother, Teresa González Puerto, who serves a vital role in the author’s
critique of National Catholic patriarchal power. In this analysis, I will also
focus on a small, but interrelated, plotline that involves a non-heteronorma-
tive couple whose story forms part of the narrator’s search for understanding.
I contend that Grandes takes up one of the most understudied questions
facing memory studies in Spain today as she traces the bonds between groups
whose resistance to hegemonic gender and sexual norms joins them together.
Viewed in tandem, these nostalgically rendered characters bring into focus
the connected histories of subjugation within the context of Franco’s Spain
and their legacies in the present.
Almudena Grandes begins El corazón helado with an epigraph by María
Teresa León (1903–1988) who spent decades in exile in France (1939–1940),
Argentina (1940–1964) and Italy (1964–1977). “For thirty years we have
longed for a paradise. . . . We are the exiles of Spain. . . . Leave us our ruins.
We must begin again from the ruins. We will get there” (León, Memoria a la
melancolía, 1970). By citing León, Grandes implores readers to consider
how nostalgia has shaped a generation of exiled Republican women severed
from their homeland. The “paradise” for which León longs is not only a place
but an ethos of commitment to revolutionary ideology. “Leave us our ruins,”
León states to describe an attachment to a historically specific past and
progressive political community torn asunder by war and distorted by the
regime’s consolidators. She summons her fellow exiles and emphasizes the
role of memorial return in the ongoing process of identity construction: “We
must begin again from the ruins. We will get there.” As Gina Herrmann
notes, León’s memoir “reflects on the process by which political beliefs and
commitments become imbricated in the process of identity formation” (Herr-
mann 2010, xii). By beginning El corazón helado with León, Grandes lays
the foundations for what becomes an act of bonding with the progressive
women that came before her. From different generational standpoints,
Grandes narrates the interwoven relationship between the emotional, the his-
torical, the political, and the cultural, and also how these interpolate the
present.
The novel opens at a funeral on the outskirts of Madrid—a place of
mourning—where the main character named Álvaro (b. 1965) remembers his
enigmatic father, Julio Carrión, who was born in 1922 and came of age
during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Through that plotline, the author
initiates a reflection on concealment, recovery, and identity. As the present-
day protagonist rummages through his father’s belongings in the wake of the
146 Chapter 5

funeral, he discovers a locked box holding a collection of documents and

photos that serve as clues that ultimately reveal the origins of his family’s
massive accumulation of wealth. Álvaro tracks down a web of characters,
discovering an entire related Republican family tree that he never knew
existed. He finds a damning story of Nationalist profiteering from the large
properties owned by vanquished Republicans who were forced into exile.
The youngest of Republican kin, Raquel Fernández Perea (b. 1969), becomes
Álvaro’s link to a political history with whom he longs to identify and some-
how make amends. The seemingly irrepressible romance between these dis-
tant cousins represents a symbolic homecoming, one that brings out the
politicized nature of home as well as its complexities and contradictions. The
end dramatizes the second generation’s realization of the corrupt environ-
ment of their origins and the plight that they face after gaining such knowl-
edge.
Piecing together fragments of stories and historical records, Álvaro re-
alizes the multifaceted and contradictory nature of history and its actors. The
discovery of his father’s membership in the Juventudes Socialistas Unifica-
das (JSU) and his military record in the Blue Division raises serious ques-
tions about his father's identity. Álvaro comes to realize that his limited
knowledge of the war is a result of his failure to care enough to inquire.
Readers, by contrast, gain access to his father’s perspective through a third-
person narrator situated in the past. In alternating chapters, readers learn that
Julio is a chameleonic figure, wavering between political bands depending
on their position of power. His motivation is consistently wealth and power.
It is a desire to ascend above the rural lower-middle-class status to which he
was born in the small town of Torrelodones (near Madrid). In 1937, at the
age of fifteen, he moves to Madrid and later works as a mechanic, making
meager wages. The author emphasizes his economic and sexual ambition,
inseparable and of equal importance. He views the control over women as a
true demonstration of masculinity. The garage separates him from the world
of elegant streets, opulent shop windows, beautiful women and money
(Grandes 2010, 141). The author captures the effects of a hierarchical capital-
ist and patriarchal framework by portraying a man uninterested in overturn-
ing power structures, but rather in navigating and scaling them. Grandes
describes the trap in which this character finds himself as a form of “destier-
ro” (Grandes 2007, 167) or “exile” (Grandes 2010, 141). The sense of aliena-
tion emerges not only from the experience of physical banishment but also
from the experience of competition and dehumanization associated with the
forces of capitalism. The answer for Julio is not resistance, but acquiescence.
By 1939, he sides with the fascists for their imminent victory, as well as for
their contempt for class and gender equality. In the aftermath of the war, this
character fights with the Blue Division, a unit of approximately eighteen
thousand Spanish fascist volunteers that served the Nazi Army on the Eastern
 Nostalgia and Inner Exile in Almudena Grandes’s Spain 147

Front of World War II from 1941–1944 and were defeated. In that war
context, Julio engages in a range of misogynist acts, including the exploita-
tion of Polish women prisoners.
Through this character, the author builds a complex portrait of economic
opportunism and its gendered underpinnings. He spends two and a half years
in France (1944–1947) speculating an allied victory and subsequent over-
throw of the Franco regime at which point he would conveniently turn coats
once again and return with the Spanish Republican exiles. In France, Julio
befriends the Fernández family, a group of exiled Republicans whose wealth
becomes the object of his desire. He soon devises an elaborate scheme to
claim and sell their properties in Spain by manipulating an already corrupt
political and economic system that benefitted the Francoist victors. In the
words of Lorraine Ryan, “Julio is representative of an inequitable configura-
tion of power, affluence, and masculine respect that originates in the unjust
postwar redistribution of Republican property and wealth, sanctioned by
laws such as the 1939 Ley de Responsabilidades Politícas [Law of Political
Responsibilities], which ratified the illegal expropriation of Republican prop-
erty” (Ryan 2017, 84).
To add to this economic exploitation, Julio perpetrates an arguably more
devastating ploy involving sexual exploitation, which is a plotline that allows
the author to comment on the intersections of identity and power. Through
guise and deceit, he becomes determined to conquer this Republican family’s
daughter, Paloma Fernández, known as the “Red Widow.” After gaining her
trust, she becomes sexually involved with him, breaking her abstinence since
the death of her husband in the Civil War. He then betrays the entire
Fernández family, leaving them landless and in despair. As excluded Repub-
lican exiles, they are left with no legal recourse for retribution. Upon her
realization of Julio’s multi-layered deception, this leading female figure be-
comes suicidal. The author’s representation of the effects of misogyny in the
context of the Franco regime is further nuanced through a depiction of Julio’s
relationships with a range of other women. In this way, Grandes unromanti-
cally depicts messy relationships and the challenges that Republican women
faced during the 1940s.
The author takes up the unsettling theme of prostitution through a charac-
ter named Mari Carmen, and in doing so, explores the gendered nature of the
economic and political consequences of the war. She is a former militant of
the Socialist Youth (JSU) who avoids postwar imprisonment but becomes
robbed of her revolutionary self, unemployed, and precariously surviving to
support her child while her husband serves his sentence as a political prison-
er. Mari Carmen’s humiliation is only reinforced when she reencounters
Julio Carrion, who had unsuccessfully pursued her during the Second Repub-
lic. When Julio sees her undernourished body on the streets of Madrid, he
also sees an opportunity for exploitation. The intimacy that she had previous-
148 Chapter 5

ly denied him could now be bought. Her body becomes another conquered
land. Like the city of Madrid, she had been “beaten into submission”
(Grandes 2010, 454). That caged city without victors, only masters, was also
“a paradise for imposters, usurers, and opportunists. A place where he might
thrive” (Grandes 2010, 454). With the wealth that he had gained from the
theft of Republican lands, Julio propositions Mari Carmen with a wad of
banknotes (Grandes 2010, 478), which she reluctantly accepts. This scene
unsettles readers with the ugly choices produced by the postwar exploitation
of republican women. It also advances a broader critique of capitalist oppor-
tunism, as well as the contradictions of the Francoist discourse that upheld
Catholic virtues, but allowed for the structural inequalities and misogynist
behavior that maintained the workings of prostitution.
Viewed alongside La voz dormida, Grandes’s narrative is not only more
complex but arguably more critical of the Franco regime to the extent that it
underscores the intersections of gendered, political, and economic violence
and its unromantic impacts. The Paloma and Mari Carmen plotlines unmask
the process by which acts of women’s subjugation have fed off patriarchal
myths about domination over a woman as being the true manifestation of
manliness. These characters’ bodies come to signify territories to be con-
quered through sexual aggression, which at the same time served the greater
political goal of expanding hegemonic patriarchal power. The novel suggests
that such acts solidified the myth of male superiority and dominance, which
not only helped silence republican women at the time but all women, even
those supporting the conservative ideology of the regime (DiGiovanni
2012a).
The subjugation of conservative women and the measure of consent that
it implies is outlined in the story of Álvaro’s maternal grandmother (Maria-
na) and his mother (Angélica), who married Julio Carrión in 1956. Born at
the turn of the century, Mariana came of age during the 1920s in a divided
family: her father (Lucas Fernández) was a conservative monarchist while
her uncle (Mateo Fernández) was a progressive republican. This split marks a
foundational moment and the emergence of two intersecting family trees
representing the Nationalist and Republican sides. During the war, Mariana
disdains her Republican kin as they threaten her class privilege. Fast-forward
to the postwar when Julio Carrión discovers the wealth of the Republican
Fernández family in France. He manipulates them into giving him power of
attorney to work as an agent for them. To facilitate the seizure of their lands,
he deceives the remaining members of the Fernández family (Mariana and
Angélica) who had been occupying the properties. In 1949, Julio takes pos-
session of all assets, marginalizing Mariana and Angélica until the latter, at
age fourteen, seduces him and works her way back as a beneficiary of the
remaining wealth of the Fernández family.
 Nostalgia and Inner Exile in Almudena Grandes’s Spain 149

This character willfully becomes a tool in the consolidation of Julio’s

power and comes to represent female complicity in the restoration of mascu-
linist hegemonic power. She is not portrayed as a mere victim as she em-
braces nationalist ideology for the class privilege that it affords her. Howev-
er, it is evident that she and her mother also suffer from unequal power
relations as wives and mothers subordinate to male authority. Through this
depiction, Grandes speaks to the larger Francoist context of patriarchal con-
trol that diminished the power of all women, even those in favor of the
regime. By including complex stories of Nationalist women, Grandes
prompts us to consider the intersectional nature of women’s experiences and
how they have shaped the story of present-day Spain.
These intertwining tales seek to expose the broader systematic expropria-
tion of lands and female bodies by the supporters of the National Catholic
Regime who remained to pillage and plunder and who have evaded account-
ability for their crimes to this day. This fictional tale points to the crossroads
of class and gender hierarchies during Franco’s Spain and connects them to a
reflection in the present through the voice of Álvaro. As he digs through his
deceased father’s possessions, he recalls frequent demonstrations of power,
particularly in relation to women. During his childhood in the 1970s, his
father would “rate” dancers on TV on a scale from one to ten. Álvaro remem-
bers that his father particularly despised women politicians. Sexism and
classism intersect to show the value system of a man upholding patriarchal
authoritarianism beyond the dictatorship. The process of remembrance is
therefore shot through with a critique of ongoing misogynist attitudes and
practices in the present.
The author’s attention to the usurpation of power by the National Catholic
apparatus and its sweeping impact on Leftist women cannot be overstated.
The novel also brings out the disenchantment produced by the discovery of
such cultural, political, and economic theft. As Álvaro sifts through his
father’s belongings, he feels “a sudden cold surge inside, a moral nausea and
a temptation to flee” (Grandes 2007, 300; English 2010, 258). The nationalist
past is framed as empty and void of inspiration. Where, then, might we find
the nostalgia in this narrative? Nostalgia, in fact, begins with disenchant-
ment—a repudiation of past and present injustices—and is sustained by a
yearning for guiding models. Grandes uses the unheroic nationalist past as a
crucial point of comparison to bring out the moral and political high ground
of the Second Republic.
Since a comprehensive analysis of each nostalgic representation would
exceed the scope of this chapter, I will focus only on the author’s interpreta-
tion of women’s resistance to facilitate a comparison with La voz dormida
and Calle Santa Fe. Of greatest concern is when and where the author ex-
presses nostalgic longing, what that longing signifies, and how that longing
is conveyed. In the previously mentioned locked box, the present-day protag-
150 Chapter 5

onist (Álvaro) discovers letters written by his paternal grandmother, Teresa

González Puerto (b. 1900), that give voice to a lineage that her son (Julio)
had effectively erased. It is in the representation of this character and in the
backdrop against which she is depicted that readers witness a literary mani-
festation of longing for resistance. The setting of this plotline begins in the
1930s and ends a decade later in the early postwar years. Through this char-
acter, the author captures an image of an empowered and mobilized woman
of the Socialist Youth (JSU) working alongside other forward-thinking wom-
en and men against patriarchal and class oppression.
The nuanced treatment of the role of sexuality in the development of
political awakening is what makes the account of Teresa González Puerto so
remarkable. Readers observe how societal pressure and gender norms had
shaped Teresa’s early decisions, namely her marriage at age twenty-one to
Julio’s father Benigno (twenty years her senior). Before the Republic, Teresa
is described as resigned to her life, living in an unloving marriage acting out
the motions of traditional womanhood. It is within the context of the Second
Republic that she is emboldened to become a public speaker, shedding her
former self. “That woman had vanished, had been shed like a useless skin to
reveal the lithe, tireless body of a young woman with the face of a girl. . . . It
was as though Teresa González had been reborn not only on the inside but on
the outside” (Grandes 2010, 151). 2 If this is a portrait of a youthful feminized
subject, it is not a naïve and infantilized one. This character makes a point of
denouncing male condescendence rooted even in the world of revolutionary
politics. Her struggle against injustice seems somewhat solitary in the rural
Sierra de Guadarrama until she meets Manuel Castro, a progressive teacher
from a neighboring town who is evacuated in 1936 at the breakout of the war.
The growth of Teresa’s intellectual and intimate relationship with Manuel
becomes a scandalous deviation from normative sexual ethics. With this
story, the author makes apparent the link between women’s sexual agency
and political agency—the private and the public. Identity formation, sexual-
ity, and consciousness constitute intersecting processes developing in tan-
dem.
The author points to the connection between women’s sexual agency and
political agency throughout the novel. A foundational moment in Julio’s life
makes that link explicit. The scene takes place after he accidentally witnesses
a moment of sexual intimacy between his mother and Manuel Castro. Julio
becomes destabilized and resolves to reject them both, convincing himself
that they had abandoned him. In early June 1937, he attempts to assert male
authority over his mother as a response. The misogyny in Julio’s reproach
signals his identification with his father. Days after this breaking point, Tere-
sa escapes to Madrid with Manuel. Julio would later find a letter and never
see his mother again. This plotline transmits an image of how the expansion
of women’s agency was met with misogyny. Teresa’s husband (Benigno)
 Nostalgia and Inner Exile in Almudena Grandes’s Spain 151

attempts to obstruct her new-found power through violence, as well as the

indoctrination of their son. This character renders visible the anxiety pro-
duced by the shifts in gender norms and the process by which progressive
women became defined as “other” and therefore demonized in patriarchal
culture. Echoing vocal fascists like Ernesto Gímenez Caballero, this charac-
ter (Benigno) goes on to thank the military rebels for purifying the city: “they
have to raze it to the ground, bring it to its knees, so that it can rise again,
pure and clean” (Grandes 2010, 156). 3 This character frames the city as
female, a detail that not only bespeaks the influence of the broader misogy-
nist political discourse wielded by the Nationalist forces but also indicates
the sources of Julio’s gendered conception of power over places and women.
It is unsurprising that a nostalgia for the “past” as opposed to the degenerate
present becomes the axis of Benigno’s discourse. The past becomes synony-
mous with the “golden age” and modernity with the “Fall, which is inevitably
bound up with the sin of Eve—the undoing of humankind due to the lust of a
woman (DiGiovanni 2012a). The author’s characterization of Benigno and
Julio hinges upon an insightful critique of militarized masculinity and inter-
nal colonization, as well as the misogynistic rhetoric in their making.
If the author uses these characters to spell out the gendered angst driving
the military backlash against the Second Republic, she uses Teresa to drama-
tize the unstable sense of place that many women experienced in the context
of the gender revolution of the 1930s. On the one hand, Teresa stands defiant
in the face of masculinist power, yet she also becomes guilt-stricken by
societal pressures and assumptions regarding reproductive and maternal re-
sponsibilities. The following passage attenuates the glow of nostalgia by
complicating women’s attitudes about their own participation in radical poli-
tics:

In her heart, Teresa González felt guilty, and though she knew inside and out
the lecture about the harmful vestiges of reactionary Catholic orthodoxy, how
they infiltrated a woman’s subconscious and had to be rooted out at all costs,
she felt much more comfortable when she was not at home (Grandes 2010,
153). 4

The author’s nostalgic depiction of the Second Republic and the Spanish
Civil War is inextricably linked to a more extensive inquiry into the harmful
effects of patriarchy and the internalized gender norms that kept women in
passive roles. Grandes not only shows the sense of instability that this mo-
ment of social upheaval produced for men like Benigno but also—in a differ-
ent way—for women and their children. When Teresa begins to speak in
1933 on behalf of Republican Socialist women, her son experiences mixed
emotions, including immense pride and fear. “Julio had never felt so impor-
tant, so proud of his mother. Nor had he ever felt so close to the abyss, when
152 Chapter 5

he realized that things were coming to their inevitable conclusion” (Grandes

2010, 154). 5 At stake was the gendered order, synonymous with male privi-
lege. Later Teresa is imprisoned by Francoist forces for her political involve-
ment and ultimately dies in 1941 of infection in a penal colony in Ocaña. Her
son (Julio), ends up identifying with his father’s defense of patriarchy and
forever rejects his mother and her memory. By extension, he denounces the
entire Republican side and allies himself with the regime to amass his own
economic and sexual power.
As I explained in chapter 2, Chilean women of the revolutionary Left
have also conveyed the unsettling gendered conflicts related to political acti-
vism. Similar to Almudena Grandes, Carmen Castillo captures the agonizing
negotiations that women have made between motherhood and political com-
mitments and how such negotiations remain unresolved today. Castillo’s film
documents the mixed feelings of the now-adult children, some of whom
remain silent about the absence of their mothers, and others who blame their
mothers for having abandoned them for the revolution. Calle Santa Fe be-
comes a channel to reveal social expectations and political limitations that
have contributed to binary understandings of “good” and “bad” motherhood.
Viewed alongside El corazón helado, we observe a shared need to engage the
paradoxes and obstacles that, as Michael Lazzara writes, “have impeded an
honest writing of the history of militancy” (Lazzara 2016, 455).
Remarkably, these narratives also capture the voices of children who
come to empathize, understand, and identify with their mothers’ stories. For
both Castillo and Grandes, remembrance of histories of struggle has the
potential to be useful in the construction of political identities and a sense of
belonging. In El corazón helado, the memory of the leading leftist female
figure is excavated over six decades later. Álvaro reconstructs what would
have otherwise been a forgotten story. The author shows the unfolding of
historical discovery and questioning by interlacing Alvaro’s thoughts in 2005
with the words written (in italics) by Teresa in a letter to her son, Julio. This
letter, hidden away for decades, constitutes a trigger for nostalgia and the
literary device that links the past and present, provoking a sea change for the
protagonist. The author places the voice of a Republican woman in her quest
for liberation alongside the thoughts of her grandson, who was told a false
story by his father. Julio’s wholesale rejection of his mother’s newly devel-
oped sense of empowerment had become the driving force behind his erasure
of her memory, as well as his disdain for all women. This story dramatizes
Michael Lazzara’s contention that “projects of domination are not just about
quelling dissent or destroying bodies, but also about eradicating the very
memory of dissent” (Lazzara 2016, 448). The need to connect with the Re-
publican past and its feminist dreams thus becomes the protagonist’s central
motivation. Álvaro reads his grandmother’s letter aloud, speaking her words
and finding connection despite her physical absence: “you can’t know how
 Nostalgia and Inner Exile in Almudena Grandes’s Spain 153

proud I am to be your grandson. . . . Teresa, I have always admired people

like you. And I know it has come too late, I know it is a pyrrhic victory, that
it cannot make up for defeat, but you have won the war now, Grandma”
(Grandes 2010, 262). 6 As Álvaro reaches out to his dead grandmother, he
sympathizes with Republican women more broadly and denounces the mar-
ginalization and suffering produced by the Nationalist insurrectionists and
the patriarchal structures that informed their violence.
At the same time, Álvaro becomes inspired by her story and longs for her
guidance. Championing the symbolic presence of her progressive convic-
tions, he incorporates them into his own identity. A photograph of her com-
bines with the letter and becomes a powerful mnemonic tool that inspires an
unsettling nostalgia: “Her picture sent a sudden wave of love surging through
me, as deep as it was ambiguous, since it related to everything I had gained
and everything I had lost in losing my father. I had gained a grandmother,
and found a rare fierce happiness” (Grandes 2010, 329). 7
Whereas the rejection of the father denotes a break with the patriarchal
oppression upheld by the Franco regime, the establishment of a bond with the
grandmother marks a longing to rekindle the feminist emancipatory poten-
tials of the Second Republic for the future. If Franco’s discourse conveyed a
restorative nostalgia for the stability of the patriarchal family as a reaction to
the gender revolution of the Republican 1930s, then Grandes subverts that
discourse by vindicating a maternal lineage founded in Republican dreams of
gender and class equality. The family comes to represent both a site of
rupture and a wellspring of inspiration. By framing Alvaro’s awakening as
inextricably linked to memories of women’s multilayered struggles, the au-
thor illustrates the interplay between nostalgic remembrance and critical con-
sciousness.
Another way in which readers gain insight into the interplay between
nostalgic remembrance and critical consciousness is through a subplot in-
volving queer experiences and identities in rural Spain. With this thread, the
author traces affinities between marginalized groups and underscores the
transformative power of discovery through a nostalgic journey. The story
builds as Álvaro returns to the small town of Torrelodones not only to track
down documentation of his grandmother’s life and death but also to talk to
those who remembered her. There he meets Encarnita, born around 1925,
now in her eighties. In what becomes an unforgettable conversation, Encarni-
ta invites Álvaro to imagine her own ultra-conservative upbringing and her
father’s disapproval of Teresa’s newfound sexual and political freedom. En-
carnita remarks that her mother, on the other hand, greatly admired Teresa.
Women’s emancipation produced a visceral reaction from those defending
patriarchy. In Encarnita's words, her father could not swallow such changes
for they made him sick.
154 Chapter 5

This subplot has clear nostalgic underpinnings. As Encarnita reminisces

about how a touch of Teresa’s insubordinate character had “rubbed off” on
her, Álvaro muses, “The ghost of Teresa González hovered over us like a
good fairy, a gentle, munificent presence” (Grandes 2010, 339). 8 Teresa
represents the rebellious spirit and the value of compassion with which the
character identifies the Second Republic. Encarnita details the cruel circum-
stances of Teresa’s untimely death and conveys anecdotes that allow Álvaro
to imagine the extent of her fight. What is then revealed is an eye-opening
joint struggle among women for sexual agency in patriarchal heteronorma-
tive culture. After Encarnita leaves the room, her daughter tells Álvaro that
her biological mother, named Amada, had always loved Encarnita, but
moved to Madrid fearful of judgment for transgressing norms. There, she
explains, Amada briefly had a sexual relationship with a man as an attempt to
pass as heterosexual. After conceiving a child out of wedlock, Amada re-
turned to Torrelodones to live with Encarnita. They later went on to share
fifty years together, raising a family. The two women, whose names notably
signify “embodied” and “loved” lived out an unspoken intimacy.
This narrative of an unarticulated fifty-year-long romance between wom-
en transmits the deep sense of alienation sustained by heteropatriarchy that
has vilified the non-heteronormative couples. Simultaneously, it becomes a
poignant fairytale of enduring love. We should recall that Álvaro muses that
“the ghost of Teresa González hovered over” “like a good fairy” tangentially
forming part of this love story that defied Francoist doctrine in various ways.
Sexuality might have been a domain of patriarchal control in Franco’s Spain,
but women nevertheless created ways of living out intimacy and emotional
bonding. After reading this passage, Encarnita’s earlier comments (conveyed
to Álvaro) become much more transparent.

‘Your grandmother didn’t hide herself away, she wasn’t ashamed, quite the
opposite, she looked radiant, it did your heart good to see her, because she was
convinced that she had every right to do what she was doing. That’s how she
was, and I have to say, I think she was right, I envy her because I . . .’ She
stopped suddenly, as though she’d bitten her tongue, and shot me a look of
panic that I didn’t know how to interpret (Grandes 2010, 341). 9

If within patriarchal heteronormative logic “good” women have been framed

as naturally passive, faithful, subordinate to men and committed to sexual
abnegation, then both queer and radical leftist heterosexual women have
been judged as deviant. Such shared struggles are evident to Encarnita and
Amada’s daughter. As she brings her discussion of her mothers’ love story to
an end, she recognizes affinities between alienated groups. Her remarks also
indicate that the silence surrounding acts of resistance does not signify inex-
istence of them, but rather their invisibility. Álvaro thanks her for her story
and thinks once again, “I felt the gentle, benevolent presence of my grand-
 Nostalgia and Inner Exile in Almudena Grandes’s Spain 155

mother still hovering over me” (Grandes 2010, 349). As if to speak directly
to Teresa, he says,

There was something heroic and yet familiar, something small yet exemplary,
something larger than life yet real, something Spanish yet universal about
Teresa Gonzalez Puerto, and all of those qualities converged on a single point.
Me. I would have fallen in love with you, Grandmother. Had I been your age,
had I known you in 1936, had I not been your grandson (Grandes 2010,
349). 10

This heroic narrative leading to a single identity constitutes an origin story,

but it is a selective one, that is self-consciously singled out among other
competing stories by the workings of nostalgia. Álvaro’s choice to reject any
affiliation with his grandfather Benigno bespeaks a disavowal of Nationalist
ideology and its patriarchal principles. In the essay “Queering Roots, Queer-
ing Diaspora,” Jarod Hayes maintains that roots narratives often rely on a
patrilineal family tree structured by heterosexual marriage and reproduction
(Hayes 2011, 73). The Encarnita/Amada/Teresa plot complicates that pre-
scription with a portrayal of a chosen matrilineal kinship that honors a diver-
sity of practices and identifications.
The “home” that Grandes constructs foregrounds and defies the double
marginalization of non-heterosexual women. Readers encounter what Hirsch
and Miller call “the political dimensions of the private and familial” (Hirsch
and Miller 2011, 8). The private romance between Encarnita and Amada and
their friendship with Teresa brings clarity to Álvaro’s understanding of the
political stakes of the Spanish Civil War. To be sure, the social reforms of the
Second Republic were insufficient and riddled with contradictions; however,
the potential for sexual emancipation was far greater than in the wake of the
war. Under Franco, homosexuality was silenced by fear of segregation and
legal sentencing to work camps. The censure of poets like Luis Cernuda and
Federico García Lorca attests to the muffling of oppositional voices in the
public sphere. As noted by Gema Pérez-Sánchez in Queer Transitions in
Contemporary Spanish Culture (2007), the transition ushered in reflections
on queer masculinities, yet women’s voices were given less attention with
Ana María Moix as one of the few examples. Over thirty years later, Grandes
registers the effects of a culture narrowly defined by heteronormative expec-
tations and vindicates its disruption. The astonishment with which Álvaro
responds to Encarnita and Amada’s love story in 2005 reminds us that even
decades after the transition, novels and films chronicling the war and dictat-
orship have been dominated by heterosexual male perspectives and have
offered a small range of stereotypes to represent women’s lives.
El corazón helado sounds a call to explore such silences further and to
question universal narratives. By recording the ongoing negotiations around
gender and sexuality, Grandes makes manifest the intersectional nature of
156 Chapter 5

identities and the ways in which gender politics shape the construction of
memory and nostalgia. El corazón exemplifies Hirsch and Miller’s claim that
if we are “attentive to hierarchies of gender and sexuality and the power
dynamics of contested histories, we find that hidden within what appears to
be a universal narrative of rights are uneven and gendered smaller stories,
forgotten and submerged plots” (Hirsch and Miller 2011, 7).
Álvaro’s decision to embrace the Encarnita/Amada/Teresa kinship under-
pins a dual critique. His family not only actively participated in the Francoist
classist project by accumulating wealth through the theft of Republican lands
but also failed to question socially prescribed roles. The realization of the
cumulative effects of an ideology rooted in injustice creates an ethical dilem-
ma for Álvaro. In the end, he seeks redress by confronting his mother and
siblings about their own responsibility in a history of misappropriation. After
his family responds with indifference and hostility, he finds himself uncer-
tain about the future stability of his family ties. This is not a story of reconcil-
iation, but one of fracture, reckoning, and longing. The protagonist’s sense of
alienation within his own family, and his desire to belong among the progeny
of the dispossessed, points to the experience of many Spaniards interested in
distancing themselves from the Franco regime. Although what I have ana-
lyzed here involves only a fraction of the epic narrative that Grandes con-
structs, it serves to illustrate the centrality of nostalgia in El corazón helado
and its potential to coexist with a thought-provoking inquiry into the con-
struction of histories, memories, roots, and identities.

CHILDHOOD MEMORIES OF RESISTANCE IN EL LECTOR DE

JULIO VERNE

At this point, I will turn to a comparatively shorter and more recent novel by
Grandes to explore how the author’s nostalgic gaze extends beyond her epic
masterpiece. El lector de Julio Verne and El corazón helado both involve
women’s stories of resistance and dramatize the development of historical
consciousness whereby narrators confront their own families’ histories of
complicity and come to identify with histories of resistance. Whereas El
corazón helado spans over a full century and centers on the experience of
adults, El lector de Julio Verne focuses on the lives of children in the post-
war. The author portrays the sons and daughters of Republicans and Nation-
alists as eyewitnesses in a landscape of ideological conflict. Messy moral
choices and the process of conscientization constitute the dramatic tension
and produce a counter-discourse that exposes the regimes’ military culture
and justification of gender, economic, and political violence. Significantly,
Grandes chooses a young boy as the protagonist. His experience of inner
 Nostalgia and Inner Exile in Almudena Grandes’s Spain 157

exile, characterized by feelings of otherness in Franco’s Spain, becomes the

catalyst for transformation and principled resistance to toxic masculinity.
The figure of the young boy provides a powerful channel through which
to explore the themes of gender socialization, lost innocence, and nostalgia,
along with the lasting traumatic consequences of state violence on identity
formation. Through the lens of childhood memories, the author envisions
radical acts of collective responsibility and resistance to the segregation of
political “others,” as well as alternatives to the class and gender structures of
Franco’s Spain. Grandes colors the experience of political persecution with a
sense of fellowship, thereby defining a nuanced place of origins that chal-
lenges the regime’s hegemonic narratives. The novel is a coming-of-age
story narrated by Nino, a nine-year-old son of a civil guard—now an adult
reflecting on his formative years—1947 to 1949. Like other historical novels
and films such as Manuel Rivas’s well-known short story turned feature film
La lengua de las mariposas (1996), the power of literature and education is a
motif that runs throughout the novel and emphasizes the intellectual and
ideological underpinnings of the Second Republic. But whereas La lengua de
las mariposas takes place before the war, the backdrop of El lector de Julio
Verne is the postwar. Similar to the case of Dulce Chacón, the novel reveals a
move from a sense of nostalgia for the prewar past to the postwar period,
which becomes the setting for a new interpretation of anti-fascist resistance
and Republican forms of identity.
The years represented in the novel were crucial for the Republican resis-
tance fighters, known as the maquis. From 1939–1945, the war against fas-
cism in Europe provided Republicans in exile and within Spain with a sense
of hope in an allied victory. As Gina Herrmann explains, many loyalists took
to Spain’s rugged mountainous regions, which offered them an escape from
reprisals and a space to organize Communist, Marxist, and Anarchist resis-
tance operations (Herrmann 2006). Such activities required a network of
sympathizers who risked their lives to provide the maquis with the neces-
sities for survival. “Supplying the armed resistance in some rural areas raised
the morale of the defeated population until, that is, the savage reprisals taken
by the authorities took their toll of popular support. Support networks, when
discovered, were dismantled with violence: Detention, torture, and execution
awaited anyone captured who had offered material aid or shelter to the guer-
rillas” (Herrmann 2006). By the end of World War II, Republican hope in an
allied overthrow of the Franco dictatorship had diminished, and the regime
further consolidated its power through unfettered practices of state control.
To wipe out any remaining resistance, the civil guard tightly controlled rural
base areas and increased pressure on civilians providing support to the guer-
rilla groups. Between 1951–1952, the communist party in exile ordered a
withdrawal of the guerrilla units, but many remained in hiding.
158 Chapter 5

To depict that setting, Grandes weaves together extensive archival re-

search and oral histories into numerous plotlines that deconstruct Francoist
narratives of the guerrilla. The story of the protagonist is based on the real-
life story of the author’s friend, Cristino—who was the son of a low-paid
civil guard in Franco’s police forces. Growing up in the barracks of a small
town in the southern region of Jaén, Cristino witnessed the nightmarish inter-
rogation of political prisoners and the slow unraveling of his father who was
often sent on dangerous patrols to track down and capture rebel groups. The
ethical issues in the novel thus pivot upon the way in which the author
represents this young character and his struggles to negotiate his own identity
within the context of marginalizing classifications and foundational inequal-
ities. The drama unfolds as the nine-year-old boy begins private lessons in
typography to train to become an administrative assistant. That plotline al-
lows the author to bring together two characters from apparently different
worlds—Nino, the son of a civil guard and Doña Elena, a one-time Republi-
can schoolteacher, now private tutor living on the outskirts of the village with
a group of widowed Republican women who provide a safe house for resist-
ers operating in the region. It is through the relationship between these char-
acters that the author conceptualizes a virtual community based on kinship
that goes beyond the biological family or political party.
As the title of the novel suggests, the author carves out a space to explore
the socio-political dimension of education and literature, and in doing so
reaffirms the significance of the educational projects of the Second Republic.
Through the voices, attitudes, and actions of the characters, the author places
in stark contrast the possibilities that the Republic represented on the one
hand and the stagnation and injustice of Nationalist Spain on the other. While
this narrative motif may seem to inscribe the novel within a familiar nostal-
gic premise—that of the dawn of progressive movements in 1931 and their
violent elimination in 1939—it provides an opportunity to look beyond the
discourse of aberration and to trace the more profound roots of Republican
Spain and its surviving legacy even in the aftermath of war. Intertextual
references to 19th-century thinkers, like Galdós, underscore the enduring
tradition of engagement with issues involving gender and class inequalities.
Grandes thus historicizes the narrative of resistance, mapping out a cultural
lineage that undermines the regime’s crusade propaganda that fashioned their
mission as a necessary reconquest and cleansing of cultural deviance. By
broadening the scope, Grandes invokes an extensive history of struggle,
which in turn yields a reflection on the relationship between the past and the
present.
The author goes beyond superficial understandings of the period through
references to nineteenth and early-twentieth century authors, as well as
through a diverse cast of characters, elaborate plotlines, and settings. Promi-
nent figures include Pepe the Portuguese, Sanchís, and Catalina la Rubia.
 Nostalgia and Inner Exile in Almudena Grandes’s Spain 159

Pepe the Portuguese is a guerrilla liaison who secretly communicates critical

information for the cause of the anti-Franco resistance. Sanchís is a civil
guard who pursues the guerillas while he clandestinely collaborates with
them. Catalina la Rubia is a mother of nine children and the widowed matri-
arch of a community of women who have lost their husbands, siblings, and
fathers in the war or the underground resistance. The novel’s narrative land-
scapes are as important as the characters. Through setting, the author casts
light on how the desire for a familiar geographic “home” intersects with a
longing for a sense of political, social, and emotional belonging.
If notions of male superiority and colonial subjugation of the defeated
Republicans shaped the National-Catholic ideology, then Grandes exposes
and subverts such discourses by moving the experiences of non-Catholic
leftist women and children from the margins to the center. The author
contrasts two primary settings: the town and the farmhouse. The town repre-
sents the public sphere under the regime: a policed zone of class and gender
inequality. It is a masculinized and colonized site where the horrors of im-
prisonment, economic ostracism, and gender hierarchies are vividly por-
trayed. For example, the spouse of the leading rebel leader, Cencerro, is
sentenced to six years in prison for revealing the identity of her unborn
child’s father who had been in hiding. Her body is cast within the National-
Catholic discourse as deviant and inferior, while her unborn child is deemed
illegitimate. Through this detail, the author suggests that socially constructed
categories of gender and class formed the foundation of structural inequal-
ities in Franco’s Spain. The author depicts the intersections of discrimination
(gender, class, politics) and suggests that legal policies regulating women’s
bodies served in the larger process of internal colonization.
The town is a masculinized site, but the farmhouse, by contrast, is a
feminized site. It is populated by Republican women—mothers, widows, and
daughters bonded together not through blood ties, but shared experience and
a commitment to the collective. The farmhouse is the location of geographic
inner exile—literally on the fringes of society. At the same time, this land-
scape takes on a utopic character precisely because it is apart from the town
center and in some measure disconnected from the dominant values of the
military regime. The periphery becomes the place of social belonging. Dis-
placement from the center allows the marginalized to bond together and to
ease the suffering of alienation produced by internal exile. As I stated earlier,
this representation contrasts with the image of inner exile depicted by post-
war authors like Laforet and Matute to the extent that Grandes’s characters
find a community that transforms the pain of expulsion into a meaningful
experience. If the author’s description of the inhospitable winter nights
comes to signify the hostile social climate of the public sphere under Franco,
then the warm summer days symbolize the vibrant communal life of the
farmhouse. The author imagines a territory that overturns the power dynam-
160 Chapter 5

ics and inequalities of Francoist society. Strong female-centered networks

bring together dislocated Republicans. Single mothers support one another in
creating stable homes for their children. In this way, Grandes challenges the
Francoist official characterization of this kind of family as “dysfunctional”
and upends the regime’s rhetoric on traditional family values, which served
during the Franco years to mask state violence and delegitimize the diversity
of family forms.
The nostalgia with which the author constructs the Republican women of
the farmhouse is explicit. For the narrator, they made the spring of 1948 a
foundational positive memory: “the best life that I had ever had; days of
books, words, and laughter . . . exciting days, days of adventures and secrets
(Grandes 2012, 189, my translation). 11 In that time-space, the narrator forms
an alternative conception of ideal womanhood, indicating that instead of
being suited for a girl with bows and tights he’d be better off with “una cabra
montesa” [a mountain goat] (Grandes 2012, 384) like the free-spirited Re-
publican women of the farmhouse. In nostalgically imagining this site and
the characters that populate it, the author offers a microcosm that effectively
becomes a counterpoint to the dominant image of the patriarchal family
glorified by the National-Catholic state.
But such nostalgia is also unsettling. It is through the Republican women
of the farmhouse that Nino sees firsthand how identity markers, including
political affiliation, gender, religion, and class, determined access to status
and power. They live on the margins of society—in a state of poverty, which
Francoist society found deserved. Nino’s desire for a home within a virtual
family of political dissidents sits alongside his love for his biological family,
and specifically a father employed by the regime. The child is haunted by a
set of rules that defined gender roles in Francoist society, and he is tormented
by the idea that his father contributed to the politically engineered inequality
and animosity of postwar Spain. He longs to belong within the leftist collec-
tivities that defied political, class, and gender hierarchies, but that longing is
unsettling. The development of relationships between politically diverse
characters brings out the complexities of the historical moment while facili-
tating a reflection on the political and gendered positions that shaped them.
To this point, I have argued that Almudena Grandes reimagines the expe-
rience of inner exile as a time of political resistance to totalitarian practices.
In doing so, she bespeaks a longing to reclaim a cultural continuity in opposi-
tion to the regime’s reductive nationalist narratives. Progressive women are
recast as survivors, not as victims, and the story of repression and struggle
becomes the story of courage. At the same time, Grandes complicates these
experiences in the interest of contributing to plural understandings of the
destruction of dictatorial violence. Upholding a spirit of opposition to Mani-
chean narratives of essential identities, she illustrates the myriad entangle-
ments of roots. Within the village setting, the novel stages the difficult and
 Nostalgia and Inner Exile in Almudena Grandes’s Spain 161

shifting political positions between families who secretly supported the op-
position and those who denounced them, showing how Francoism enforced
an alienating binary, which, as historian Helen Graham suggests “diminished
and even in some cases destroyed [not only the vanquished but also] the
victors.” (Graham 2004, 324). The author underscores the devastating effects
of the regime’s socio-economic apparatus and patriarchal structures by incor-
porating unpredictable characterizations and plotlines into her narrative rep-
ertoire. Readers are always aware of her ideological compass, yet she recog-
nizes the painful existence of moral ambiguities.
The character that best represents the author’s subversion of the typically
nostalgic discourse of good and evil is the main character’s father—Antoni-
no. He is a Civil Guard who feigns his allegiance to the New State after
witnessing the murder of his Republican father and grandfather during the
war. He is perhaps the most tormented character, guilt-ridden and hated by
villagers on both sides of the political divide. Both Antonino and his wife
Mercedes (the narrator’s mother) experience another form of inner exile,
living on a tenuous fault-line. They experience the permanent threat of be-
trayal by those Republicans who know his family’s story, as well as the
regressive economic policies of the regime. A turning point in the novel
involves the narrator’s discovery of his father’s hidden Republican past and
his subsequent collaboration (under threat) in the murder of one of the resis-
tance fighters. The author thus portrays the messy and confounding interrela-
tion between anti-authoritarian resistance fighters and a range of participants
in various forms of repression, who also suffered from the divisive political
and economic framework that benefitted the landed oligarchy and ruling
military elites. The characterization of the father also constitutes a critique of
postwar masculinities. As Lorraine Ryan argues, “the father-figure, Antoni-
no, incapable of transmitting a coherent and aspirational prototype of mascu-
linity, ceases to be a credible paternal figure for his son Nino, who then
embarks on a literary and relational exploration of masculinity” (Ryan 2014,
4). From my perspective, what is most significant is Nino’s transformative
relationship with strong female characters that challenge prevailing gender
ideology. As I explained earlier, through the farmhouse setting and the char-
acters that inhabit it, the author subverts the dominant image of the patriar-
chal family.
The novel ends with the culmination of the process of reflection on the
part of the narrator. He witnesses the arduous struggle of the guerrillas and
their final decision to flee. Following their escape to France, the town be-
comes for Nino an ashen wasteland. He recalls viewing a black and white
photo of participants in the resistance (Filo and Elías) along with their new-
born son in exile in Toulouse. As he looks at the photograph, he is reminded
of another photograph of himself as a baby with his parents before the war. In
his mind’s eye he sees the two photographs side-by-side and thinks: “the
162 Chapter 5

smiles were identical, also identical was the expression of placidity and of
happiness of those two couples separated by time and by history” (Grandes
2012, 352, my translation). 12 The picture moves Nino to feel of both comfort
and pain, nostalgia and melancholia. He is included and excluded from the
histories that the photos represent. By seeing a resemblance of himself in the
photographic image of the baby in exile, he attempts to imagine an alterna-
tive genealogy.
As Marianne Hirsch suggests in Family Frames, the photograph serves a
unique role in the “process of self-discovery, a discovery of a self in relation”
(Hirsch 1997, 2). Grandes stages Hirsch’s claim that when war shatters rela-
tionships and exile shapes lives, “photographs provide perhaps even more
than usual some illusion of continuity over time and space” (Hirsch 1997,
xi). Photography becomes a source of nostalgia, and an object imbued not
only with meaning but also galvanizing potential. It is significant that shortly
after the photograph scene, readers learn that Nino takes on the political
struggle of the resistance as a university student. The image and text work
together in an “entangled narrative web” that tells a complex story of loss,
longing and recovery (Hirsch 1997, 4). This beautifully rendered scene is the
literary version of what the Almudena Grandes website achieves, as I ex-
plained at the opening of this chapter.

REFRAMING NOSTALGIA

An analysis of these novels allows us to reframe nostalgia as an emotionally

charged form of memory evoked by a sense of loss and capable of raising
collective consciousness about the significance of the past for the future. In
El corazón helado, Grandes underscores the unbroken structures allowing for
the immense accumulation of wealth and power, and in doing so, frames the
post-dictatorship as a continuum in which entrenched systems of power re-
main intact. Dark pessimism, however, does not dominate since she weaves
hope through voices of resistance. In El lector de Julio Verne, readers are
confronted with stories of patriarchal political violence and forced displace-
ment, but we also envision the survival of a lineage inspired by revolutionary
ideals. The author thus brings the intersections of oppression into a forum
alongside a debate about the need to salvage repressed histories for the
present. As Hirsh and Miller state, “This dual vision can combine the desire
for “home,” and the concreteness and materiality of place and connection,
with a concomitant, ethical commitment to carefully contextualized and dif-
ferentiated practices of witness, restoration of rights, and acts of repair”
(Hirsh and Miller 2011, 5).
Almudena Grandes allows us to imagine nostalgia’s potential within a
broader framework that spotlights the legacies of systematic economic theft,
 Nostalgia and Inner Exile in Almudena Grandes’s Spain 163

as well as the present-day desire to recuperate lost sites like properties and
Republican places of memory. Similar to the case of Carmen Castillo and
Carolina Astudillo, Grandes conveys a desire to reconstruct silenced histories
of progressive politics and empowered women, while simultaneously articu-
lating an understanding of the subjective, complex, and incomplete nature of
memorial representation. My discussion of these works addresses the larger
matter of memory and representation of war and dictatorial violence and how
nostalgia for a revolutionary past can be conveyed in nuanced and thought-
provoking ways through literature.

NOTES

1. “Hay historias que nuestros padres y abuelos nunca han querido contarnos. Algunas
porque fueron tan heroicas que no soportaríamos conocer su final. Otras porque fueron tan
ruines que jamás podríamos perdonarlas. Historias que de entrada parecen mentira y que al
final siempre han sido verdad. Historias que nos helarían el corazón.”
2. “Esa señora había desaparecido, se había evaporado, se había desprendido como una
cáscara inútil del cuerpo ágil, elástico e infatigable de una mujer joven con el rostro de mucha-
cha. . . . Era como si Teresa González hubiera vuelto a nacer, por dentro pero también por
fuera” (Grandes 2007, 178).
3. “tienen que arrasarla, humillarla, destrozarla para que vuelva a surgir pura, nueva, lim-
pia” (Grandes 2007, 183).
4. “En el fondo de su corazón, Teresa González se sentía culpable, y por mucho que se
supiera de memoria la lección de los indeseables vestigios del tradicionalismo reaccionario y
clerical, que anidan en el subconsciente femenino como pájaros traidores a los que hay que
eliminar a toda costa, se sentía mucho más cómoda fuera de casa que dentro” (Grandes 2007,
180).
5. “Julio nunca se había sentido tan importante, tan orgulloso de su madre. Tampoco había
sentido jamás el borde del abismo . . . cuando comprendió que se avecinaba un final inevitable”
(Grandes 2007, 181).
6. “no puedes calcular el orgullo que siento de ser tu nieto. . . . Teresa, he admirado tanto a
la gente como tú . . . y ya sé que esta victoria póstuma, simbólica y tardía nunca te consolará de
aquella derrota pero tú, hoy, has ganado la guerra, abuela” (Grandes 2007, 305).
7. “Su imagen desató en mi interior una oleada de amor repentino, profunda pero ambigua,
porque no sólo tenía que ver con ella, sino conmigo, con todo lo que había ganado y había
perdido al perder a mi padre, al ganar a mi abuela, al consentir con una alegría rara y furiosa”
(Grandes 2007, 387)
8. “el fantasma de mi abuela Teresa volaba sobre nuestras cabezas igual que la estela
brillante de un hada madrina, una presencia dulce y benéfica” (Grandes 2007, 398).
9. “Tu abuela no se escondía al salir a la calle, ni estaba arrepentida, ni tenía mala cara,
nada de nada. Al revés, estaba como unas pascuas, daba gusto verla, porque estaba segura de
que tenía derecho a hacer lo que quisiera. Ella era así, y a mí eso también me parece bien, qué
quieres que te diga, me da envidia, porque. . . . Entonces se calló de pronto, igual que si se
hubiera mordido la lengua, y me dirigió una mirada de alarma que no pude interpretar”
(Grandes 2007, 400).
10. “Había algo heroico y algo familiar, algo ejemplar y algo pequeño, algo grandioso y
algo conocido, algo maravilloso y algo cotidiano, algo español y algo universal en Teresa
Gonzáles Puerto, y todos esos ingredientes desembocaban en el mismo sitio, que era yo. Yo me
habría enamorado de ti abuela. Si hubiera tenido tu edad, si te hubiera conocido en el 36, si no
hubiera sido tu nieto” (Grandes 2007, 409).
164 Chapter 5

11. “la mejor vida que había tenido jamás, días de libros, de palabras, de risas . . . fueron
días emocionantes aquellos, días aventureros y secretos, casi clandestinos” (Grandes 2012,
189).
12. “las sonrisas eran idénticas, idéntica la expresión de placidez, de felicidad, de aquellas
dos parejas separadas por el tiempo y por la historia” (Grandes 2012, 352).
 Chapter Six

Detective Pursuits of an Ironic

Nostalgic
Roberto Bolaño’s Estrella distante

NOSTALGIA AND IRONY

In the conclusion of The Future of Nostalgia, Boym compares the act of

recollection to the act of gazing into a rearview mirror: “There should be a
special warning on the sideview mirror: The object of nostalgia is further
away than it appears” (Boym 2001, 354). The mirror reflects an image that
does not possess nostalgia, but the mirror image becomes the focus of nostal-
gic desire. Longing arises from “an interaction between subjects and objects,
between actual landscapes and the landscapes of the mind” (Boym 2001,
354). Contrary to common belief, Boym explains, nostalgia is similar to
irony since they are both forms of resistance that allow affection and reflec-
tion to be combined (2001, 354). “On the other side of ironic estrangement
might be emotion and longing; they are yoked as two sides of a coin” (Boym
2001, 354). But if irony involves implicit and uneasy double meanings and
often humoristic suggestions of alternative or multiple interpretations that
overturn the surface message, then not all nostalgic longing is yoked to irony.
Consciousness of the distance and distortions that are inherent in that rear-
view mirror image reflecting the past is what distinguishes settling from
unsettling forms of nostalgia. Dramatic irony, for David Lodge, is generated
“When the reader is made aware of a disparity between the facts of a situa-
tion and the characters’ understanding of it” (Lodge 1993, 179). As I see it,
when dramatic irony combines with wistful memory, unsettling nostalgia
emerges.

165
166 Chapter 6

The representation of unsettling nostalgia in literature not only coexists

but, in some cases, depends upon dramatic irony. Through the art of fiction,
nostalgic longing can unsettle readers at the moment that it becomes evident
that nostalgia has more to do with a sense of lack in the present than it does
with the past. Moments of self-discovery and critique of one's own contradic-
tions, inauthenticity, and shortcomings set within the larger process of recol-
lection destabilizes any flawless or grandiose portrait of the past. Both irony
and unsettling nostalgia are oppositional in nature as they resist the deceptive
appearances of any past perfection as much as they confront the disenchanted
present. Boym beautifully captures the complexity and value of nostalgia
when she writes that it “can be both a social disease and a creative emotion, a
poison and a cure. . . . Acknowledging our collective and individual nostal-
gias, we can smile at them, revealing a line of imperfect teeth stained by the
ecologically impure water of our native cities” (Boym 2001, 354–55).
These reflections on the relationship between nostalgia and irony serve as
an entryway to my interpretation of the novel Estrella distante (1996) by the
widely acclaimed author Roberto Bolaño. Born in 1953, Bolaño spent his
childhood in Chile until his family moved to Mexico City in 1968 when he
was fifteen. During the late 1960s, he came of age within the context of
political unrest and mass demonstrations that were violently suppressed.
Shortly after, he headed first to El Salvador then back to Chile in 1973. One
month later, at the age of twenty, Pinochet launched the CIA-backed military
coup that would lead to seventeen years of dictatorship. His accounts suggest
that he stayed in Chile for five months and worked with underground resis-
tance networks in Concepción until he was briefly detained. After his release,
he returned to Mexico then moved to Paris and ultimately Barcelona, where
he lived until his untimely death at age fifty in 2003. 1 While most accept this
account, some have raised questions regarding the reliability of his story. 2
What is clear, and most pertinent to this study, is Bolaño’s view that Septem-
ber 11, 1973, was a defining political moment that would come to signify
rupture and loss. The novel Estrella distante is a reflection on time, memory,
and nostalgia that flashes backward and forward. It questions the ways in
which the military coup has unraveled again and again in the minds of those
who experienced it, as well as in the minds of those who stood on the
sidelines and ended up feeling uncertainty, sorrow, and regret for their own
inaction.
Similar to Roberto Brodsky and Carolina Astudillo, Roberto Bolaño was
shaped by the historical and cultural contexts of both Chile and Spain in the
1970s and 1980s and explored in his writings the transatlantic connections
between fascist ideologies in Spain and Chile that I have traced in Unsettling
Nostalgia. Situating Bolaño within a comparative framework produces valu-
able insights that might otherwise be ignored. Additionally, an analysis of
Bolaño’s fiction within a book on nostalgia may seem surprising to some
 Detective Pursuits of an Ironic Nostalgic 167

readers with a skeptical, if not narrow, understanding of nostalgia. If nostal-

gia is merely a self-indulgent longing for a homeland or a feel-good form of
remembering that dilutes at best and, at worst, evacuates the complexities of
the past, then Bolaño’s narrative defies the nostalgic mode. But, as I have
illustrated throughout this book, unsettling nostalgia centers on sociopolitical
environments instead of mythical homelands, and also questions its own
sources and significance.
Many critics have correctly argued that what makes Bolaño’s work so
remarkable is its critique of impunity, willed blindness, and complicity in the
post-Pinochet aftermath (Draper, Lazzara, Martín Cabrera, Franco). While I
agree with these critics, I contend that Bolaño’s writing also transmits an
alternative form of nostalgia that is at once ironic, oppositional, and poig-
nant. It is an unsettling nostalgia that understands that individual and collec-
tive experiences of alienation and disillusionment in the present fuel techni-
colored memories of participation and shared optimism. Bolaño’s nostalgia
is also a form of longing that self-consciously grapples with the making and
unmaking of gendered myths, utopias, and dystopias. With a deliberate effort
to elaborate on issues of gender and sexuality, this chapter frames Estrella
distante as an unsettling nostalgic novel that confronts dominant narratives of
the Right and the Left and illuminates the ways in which longing shapes
conspiracy theories and Manichean scripts of heroes and villains. 3

MEMORY AND MOTIVATION

The narrative form of Estrella distante is akin to El corazón helado by

Almudena Grandes insofar as both revolve around plots of historical intrigue
wherein the narrator/protagonist investigates unsolved crimes perpetrated
against women who challenged patriarchal practices and fascist culture.
What is different about Bolaño is his employment and subversion of the
narrative strategies of the detective novel and the historical novel, merging
fact and fiction so that the reader has difficulty discerning the boundaries
between them. Similar to the author, the semi-autobiographical narrator is a
novelist and poet who left Chile after the coup and eventually moved to
Barcelona. His story begins in Blanes in 1996 during an early period of
investigation of human rights violations following the plebiscite that ended
dictatorial rule. The narrative unfolds around a secret investigation of the
murders of the Garmendia sisters who were the narrator’s former friends at
the University of Concepción. Based solely on conjectures and a maze of
literary texts, the narrator deduces that the sisters were murdered, dismem-
bered and “disappeared” by one of their Allende-era acquaintances named
Carlos Wieder who had infiltrated their poetry workshop under the pseudo-
nym Alberto Ruiz-Tagle.
168 Chapter 6

The narrator’s actions and behaviors are the result of his motivations,
which involve the need for redress as well as a desire to maintain a connec-
tion to a fragmented community. As a novel constructed around a first-
person monologue, readers gain insight into the narrator’s drive through his
descriptions of the Allende years, which are threaded throughout the story.
Glowing memories of his former poetry group torn asunder by the military
coup signal the extent to which nostalgia sustains his search. He conjures the
memory of the “undisputed stars” of the poetry workshop, Angelica and
Veronica Garmendia, whose names connote innocence and the victory of
truth. Their very presence at the center of a traditionally male-dominated
space points to a time of sexual liberation characterized by the questioning of
traditional codes of behavior and by movements for the empowerment of
women and sexual minorities that had long been marginalized and socially
policed. The following passage, taken from the first page of Estrella distante,
offers the initial indication that the novel is steeped with a longing for the
cultural environment of the UP years, which the narrator associates with
youth and the shared excitement about endless possibilities:

Most of us there talked a lot, not just about poetry but politics, travel (little did
we know what our travels would be like) painting, architecture, photography,
revolution and the armed struggle that would usher in a new life and a new era,
so we thought, but which, for most of us, was like a dream, or rather the key
that would open the door into a world of dreams, the only dreams worth living
for. (Bolaño 2004, 3) 4

These nostalgic musings, which set the entire tone of the novel, echo recol-
lections of the author’s own experience as described in various essays and
interviews including the following 2005 dialogue with Eliseo Álvarez repub-
lished in Bolaño por sí mismo: “Being a poet was like being a revolutionary
and being totally open to any cultural manifestation, to any sexual expres-
sion, in short, open to everything, to any experience with drugs. Tolerance
was . . . more than tolerance, a word that we did not like very much, it was
universal kinship, something totally utopian. (my translation). 5 Nostalgia
colors these memories of belonging within a culture committed to creative
exploration and social transformation. As the title of the novel suggests, the
narrator gazes back to his distant country of origin, whose flag bears a large
white star. But similar to the other authors and filmmakers in this book, the
nostalgic longing that readers witness never celebrates national grandeur,
bygone stability, or lost traditional values. Instead, Bolaño’s longing is remi-
niscent of Boym’s reflective nostalgia as it deliberately rejects comforting
national love affairs (2001, 14). His nostalgia unsettles readers by frustrating
normative expectations of revolutionary heroism. If the narrator idealizes the
Garmendia sisters through brief vignettes, he also complicates any form of
lionization through recollections of his former mentor, Juan Stein, a Trotsky-
 Detective Pursuits of an Ironic Nostalgic 169

ist poet of Ukrainian Jewish descent. After Stein’s disappearance following

the coup, the narrator demonizes Wieder while he consciously elevates Stein
to legendary status. As I will explain, he does this with clear-eyed wit that
caricatures masculinist narratives of bravery. Similar to the case of Últimos
días de la historia, nostalgia for the pre-coup milieu, as well as the atmos-
phere directly following the coup, becomes a recourse for the narrator in
Estrella distante to establish an identity in exile. At the same time, the
narrator questions his own idealization of moments and figures of yesteryear,
and in doing so, he denaturalizes reductive versions of heroic militancy.
Another facet of Bolaño’s unsettling nostalgia involves the use of meta-
fiction. I will illustrate that this literary strategy functions to cast doubt on the
attempt to mend memory gaps and discontinuities. The narrator’s constant
questioning of his own discourse works to blur the boundaries that separate
truth, fiction, imagination, and reality. Metafiction subverts any aim to re-
store “a coherent and inspiring tale of recovered identity” (Boym 2001, 53).
This narrative strategy adds valuable reflection to the unsettling nostalgic
mode. The full stories of the Garmendia sisters, Stein, and Wieder all remain
inaccessible to both the reader and the narrator. Unlike many classic detec-
tive novelists that conclude their mysteries on a final settling note when the
solution is produced and justice is achieved, Bolaño raises questions about
the meaning of justice. As David Lodge suggests, “A solved mystery is
ultimately reassuring to readers, asserting the triumph of reason” (Lodge
1993, 310). In contrast, Estrella distante avoids neat solutions and instead
leaves readers with a perturbing vision of impunity. By placing Estrella
distante in conversation with the other novels and films in Unsettling Nostal-
gia, we further expand our scope, recognizing how nostalgia might coexist
with irony and resistance to facile understandings of resolution and closure.
In what follows, I illustrate how Bolaño’s use of intertexts functions to
question the very ability of narrative to recover the past unproblematically.
By examining Bolaño’s double focus and what Boym calls “doublespeak,” I
argue that the novel captures the longing for the excitement and community
associated with the Allende years, as well as the ambivalence and tensions
that arise from the act of memorial representation. I also explore how the
novel exposes the gendered nature of mythmaking. As a result of the narra-
tor’s constant self-reflection and critical point of view, we gain a better
understanding of how restorative nostalgic memories flatten the contours of
the past. The narrator interrogates his own idealizing gaze, and in doing so,
questions the common reinsertion of heteronormative masculinist narratives
of heroism and villainy that characterizes both the political Left and Right.
Ultimately, I argue that there is no trace of restorative nostalgia that is not
attacked and dismantled through irony and parody. Nostalgia remains at the
core of the novel, but it is oppositional and deeply unsettling.
170 Chapter 6

INTERTEXTS, PALIMPSESTS, AND THE PROBLEM

OF RESTORATION

The preface informs the reader that Estrella distante is based on the final
chapter of a previous work by Bolaño titled La literatura nazi en América
(1996). It is a novel that offers a fictional overview of the various types of
writers (i.e., short story writers, science fiction writers, poets, prison writers)
in the Americas that convey Nazi ideology (fascist, ultranationalist, racist,
xenophobic, anti-Semitic). The final chapter of Bolaño’s invented encyclope-
dia, titled “Carlos Ramírez Hoffman,” narrates the events surrounding the
murders of the Chilean Venegas sisters and the possible involvement of the
neo-fascist aviator-poet Carlos Ramírez Hoffman. This chapter is the founda-
tion of the novel Estrella distante that Arturo B. (aka Arturo Belano,
Bolaño’s alter ego) and Bolaño decide to co-write. Bolaño writes that Arturo
B. was not satisfied with the previous version and “would have preferred a
longer story that, rather than mirror or explode others, would be, in itself, a
mirror and an explosion” (Bolaño 2004, 1). The narrator’s desire to produce
an explosion and defamiliarize readers is evocative of the narrator in Últimos
días de la historia by Roberto Brodsky, who, as I explained in Chapter 1,
also seeks to blow up familiar narrative forms to provoke critical conscious-
ness.
The preface also alludes to the “animated ghost of Pierre Ménard” to cast
doubt on the process of recollection and representation and by extension
undermine the restorative nostalgic mode. “Pierre Menard, autor del Quix-
ote,” published in 1939 by Jorge Luis Borges, is a story in the form of a
literary review about Menard, the twentieth-century French writer who
undertook the recreation of the first part of Don Quixote by Cervantes.
Borges’s narrator considers Menard’s version of Don Quixote even better
than the original masterpiece. He explains Menard’s approach was to know
Spanish well, to recover the Catholic faith, to forget the history of Europe
between the years of 1602 and 1918, and to be Miguel de Cervantes. Menard
later finds this approach too easy and decides that he must go on being Pierre
Menard and reach Quixote through his own experiences, drawing from all
that he has absorbed from other great writers. To demonstrate how Menard’s
Quixote is superior to the original, the narrator offers a fragment of each
work. The fact that the two pieces are identical is one of the most humorous
and ironic elements of Borges's text, for it points to the narrator’s absurd
legitimization of Menard’s work, which he considers academic heroism. The
narrator argues that insofar as Menard’s version is read in the modern con-
text, it reverberates more powerfully because Cervantes’s words are shot
through with new meanings.
Estrella distante, like Borges’s story, is a text that ruminates on questions
of representation. Bolaño’s invented narrator (Arturo B.) is a second Bolaño,
 Detective Pursuits of an Ironic Nostalgic 171

who seeks to unearth and “restore” the original story, but with thought-
provoking self-conscious irony. Estrella distante is a palimpsest on which
the original writing (La literatura nazi en América) has been effaced to make
room for new interpretations. Instead of weaving traumatic experiences into
a flawless historical framework, Bolaño orchestrates a metafictional hybrid
detective narrative that underscores the inability to produce a single complete
version of the past. By drawing from and subverting the techniques of the
historical novel and detective novel in a narrative form that destabilizes any
individual voice of authority, Bolaño denounces the kind of teleological
historiography disseminated by the regime, while avoiding the attempt to
rewrite history.

RECALLING RUPTURE, CONSTRUCTING CONSPIRACIES

Intertexts function in the novel to display contradictory or double-coded

meanings. As a point of comparison, Bolaño’s reference to other texts
contrasts with Chacón’s restorative nostalgic intertextual employment of
documents and past motifs (i.e., allusions to the Trece Rosas, etc.). These
two authors, however, share a similar approach to narrative structure. The
non-linear or un-chronological narrative form of stroytelling in Estrella dis-
tante is similar to that of La voz dormida, as well as all of the works in this
book, to the extent that the author flashes forward and backward to under-
score the workings of memory. Similar to the case of Ultimos días de la
historia, the first-person narrator of Estrella distante begins the story in the
1990s, then moves back in time to the years of the Popular Unity. Through
narrative leaps and reflection, Bolaño underscores the notion that any attempt
to narrate past is an act of memory and a re-creation reliant on the imagina-
tion. Bolaño’s reconstruction is largely based on speculation, rumors, and a
variety of texts, which he uses not to confirm their legitimacy, but rather to
call it into question.
The narrator’s retrospective account of the days surrounding September
11, 1973, sparks thought on the seemingly incongruous coexistence of fear
and excitement bound together in nostalgic recollection. His portrait of that
volatile scenario is imbued with an unambiguous longing that stems from his
own current state of isolation, boredom, and despair. In memory, the night
before the disappearance of Angélica and Verónica Garmendia was the best
of his life:

Suddenly I felt happy, immensely happy, capable of anything, although I was

aware that meanwhile all that I believed in was collapsing forever, and that
many people, several friends of mine among them, were being hunted down or
tortured. But I felt like singing and dancing, and the bad news (or the depress-
ing commentaries on the bad news) only added fuel to the fire of my joy, to
172 Chapter 6

use an expression which is, I admit, impossibly trite (corney we would have
said back then) but does convey how I (and dare I say the Garmendia sisters)
felt, along with many other Chileans who, in September 1973, had not yet
reached the age of twenty-one. (Bolaño 2004, 17) 6

Predating his own inaction and disillusionment, the narrator describes a mo-
ment of idealism, greater possibilities, and a site of origins from which
everything would unfold. The repeated emphasis on a heightened collective
emotional state contrasts with the solitary disenchantment of the post-dictato-
rial present. The past is a distant star and yearning for that environment and
the individuals that populated it is bittersweet as they become forever out of
reach.
Nostalgia and the creation of conspiracy theories often go hand in hand as
a response to the fears produced by cataclysm. That is a point of which the
narrator seems acutely aware as he looks back on the tumultuous days fol-
lowing the coup. The disappearance of the Garmendia twins symbolizes a
point of rupture and the end of an epoch. In memory, his brief imprisonment
at La Peña detention center, their disappearance, and his arrival at a hypothe-
sis of their whereabouts become one cloudy event. After his release, he
reunites with Bibiano and Fat Marta, the only two remaining friends from the
poetry workshop. Marta’s interpretation of a conversation that she had with
Ruiz-Tagle becomes the foundation upon which the narrator bases his theory
about the disappearance of the Garmendia sisters. In that dialogue, Ruiz-
Tagle had suggested that all of the women in the poetry group were dead.
Days later, Bibiano, Marta, and Arturo B. conclude that Ruiz-Tagle was
indeed Carlos Wieder and that he killed Angélica and Verónica. What fol-
lows is an imagined reconstruction of the crime scene, wherein Ruiz-Tagle/
Wieder visits the sisters at their isolated country home in Nacimiento and
slays them during the night after which time he and the secret police slip
away without a trace. This description allows readers to imagine how indi-
viduals and groups often deal with the uncertainty, moral crisis, and sorrow
rising from political persecution. The narrator desperately attempts to build a
story even while he voices doubts about the logic of his version.
By encouraging, but at the same time frustrating, the search for truth,
Estrella distante presents the reader with competing ways of approaching the
past. The author characterizes an overtly restorative nostalgic narrator who is
at the same time ironic and self-satirizing. Boym reminds us that the term
irony is rooted in Ancient Greek meaning dissimulation and feigned ignor-
ance (Boym 2001, 354). Bolaño uses an ironic narrator as a literary technique
to comment on the creation of myth and a conspiratorial worldview based on
an unfounded plot. He illustrates what Boym calls “a Manichean battle of
good and evil and the scapegoating of the mythical enemy” (Boym 2001,
 Detective Pursuits of an Ironic Nostalgic 173

43). According to Boym, conspiracy theory is the cornerstone of restorative

nostalgia:

Conspiracy is used pejoratively, to designate a subversive kinship of others, an

imagined community based on exclusion more than affection, a union of those
who are not with us, but against us. Home is not made of individual memories
but of collective projections and ‘rational delusions.’ Paranoiac reconstruction
of home is predicated on the fantasy of persecution. This is not simply ‘forget-
ting of reality’ but a psychotic substitution of actual experiences with a dark
conspiratorial vision: the creation of a delusionary homeland. Tradition in this
way is to be restored with a nearly apocalyptic vengeance. (Boym 2001, 43)

Boym argues that insecurities and fear fuel the restorative nostalgic longing
for a conspiracy theory together with an individual or collective scapegoat
that can be held responsible for a multitude of societal problems. Insofar as
the narrator’s self-reflective comments open a space to think about the pro-
cess by which conspiracy theories and scapegoats are created, Bolaño offers
a compelling critique of the dictatorship’s Manichean discourse that utilized
scapegoating as a tool of propaganda. The novel self-consciously separates
the characters into conflicting camps: one that is compassionate and progres-
sive and the other that is reactionary and misogynist. But unlike Chacón, who
attempts to denounce the Franco regime’s monolithic discourse by replacing
it with her own monologic narrative, Bolaño ultimately complicates his own
claims. Rather than attempt to unsilence marginalized voices “intact,” he
provokes a profound reflection on memory, history, and the making of myth.
At every turn the narrator makes evident the workings of his own nostalgic
response, inviting readers to consider how individuals make selective use of
memory, how we reduce, vilify, universalize, and fail to recognize contradic-
tion and incongruity. Bolaño’s politically and aesthetically challenging form
of storytelling is part and parcel of a lucid critique of a military regime that
seized and maintained power through an authoritarian narrative of essential-
ism, exclusion, and absolutism.
If Bolaño employs literary strategies such as metafiction and intertextual-
ity to undermine the authority of any single text, and by extension erode the
foundation of the regime’s nationalist discourse, he also uses parody to ques-
tion the anti-hegemonic discourses of Chile’s neo-avant-garde. In Chile in
Transition, Michael Lazzara argues, “These artists frequently employed tech-
niques such as fragmentation, montage, and collage as ways of contravening
the dictatorial state’s rigid surveillance of language” (Lazzara 2006, 43).
Some might contend that nothing exemplifies the unorthodox methods of the
Chilean neo-avant-garde more than Raúl Zurita’s project to write a poem in
the sky. After writing Purgatorio (1979) and Anteparaíso (1982) (works
inspired by his travels across Chile’s Atacama Desert and by Dante’s Divine
Comedy), Zurita hired a pilot to write his poem “Vida Nueva” in New York
174 Chapter 6

City’s sky. Written in smoke, some of the verses read, “MI DIOS ES HAM-
BRE, MI DIOS ES NIEVE” (“MY GOD IS HUNGER, MY GOD IS
SNOW”; Zurita 1986, 1). Cultural critic Nelly Richard suggests in The In-
subordination of the Sign, that the neo-avant-garde, “advanced the militancy
of a socially committed art that sought to transcend restrictive definitions of
art and politics” (Richard 2004, 28–29).
While it is never explicit, Estrella distante communicates a more critical
view of the neo-avant-garde, thereby complicating binary discourses of the
Left and Right. More specifically, Bolaño responds critically to Zurita’s
work through parody as Wieder’s aerial poetry written from a Nazi-era fight-
er aircraft cites the Bible in Latin and refers to the beginning of the world;
“IN PRINCIPIO . . . CREAVIT DEUS . . . COELUM ET TERRAM (Bolaño
2005, 36–37). In a subsequent show, the aviator-poet writes verses such as
“La muerte es amistad, La muerte es Chile” (Bolaño 2005, 90–91) [“Death is
friendship, Death is Chile; Bolaño 2004, 80–81”]. This parody interrogates
the ways in which Zurita’s poetry has confronted the dictatorship and ex-
poses the uneasy points of convergence between discourses. Bolaño’s edgy
imitation, coupled with the narrator’s constant self-critique and apprehen-
sion, makes the novel an attack against any master narrative or discourse that
reflects the pretensions to speak with the voice of authority.
Bolaño’s parody signals a larger commentary on messianism and escha-
tologies for their assumptions that mystical forces influence tragedies and
their resolutions. Therein lies a transatlantic subversion of the restorative
nostalgic mode. We should recall that restorative nostalgia in both Franco’s
Spain and Pinochet’s Chile was rooted in the belief that the revolutionary
social mobilization of the 1930s and 1970s marked a moment of societal
decay inevitably linked to evil supernatural forces that disrupted a righteous
colonial heritage. According to Boym restorative nostalgia is characterized
by essentialist discourses that gaze backward in search of authentic origins
and stable meanings. Recalling Boym’s description, restorative nostalgia
seeks a “transhistorical reconstruction of the lost home and generates every
reactionary version of the sentiment—nationalist, heritage—fixated, funda-
mentalist, etc.” (Boym 2001, 41). Through parody and irony, Bolaño drama-
tizes a critique of both messianism and restorative nostalgia, which charac-
terize discourses on both ends of the political spectrum and speak through
both religious and secular voices.

PHOTOS AND ENGENDERED HEROES

As I have suggested throughout Unsettling Nostalgia, memory and nostalgia

cannot be disconnected from individual and collective identity. In Estrella
distante, the narrator evokes the past to distance himself from the consolida-
 Detective Pursuits of an Ironic Nostalgic 175

tors of the regime. At the same time, he associates himself with the figure of
Juan Stein, who comes to symbolize the symbiosis of artistic imagination and
political commitment. Nourishing nostalgic memories of Stein becomes a
way to hold onto an identity associated with counterculture movements torn
apart by the military coup. In Yearning for Yesterday, Davis states that nos-
talgia often looks longingly backward rather than forward for the familiar
rather than the novel and for certainty rather than discovery (Davis 1979,
108–9). Estrella distante allows us to see nostalgia from a different vantage
point: the narrator looks backward to a time that appears full of new possibil-
ities, of collective discovery and self-exploration in contrast with a stagnant
and solitary here-and-now. But he seems to be acutely aware that his view of
his former life in Concepción always passes through a filter, or rather a
colored lens that adds beauty and highlights desires while it fades out any
unappealing elements. That lens creates a greater contrast with the monotone
present.
The unconcealed awareness of such technicolored nostalgic filters is evi-
dent in the narrator’s sweeping idealization of the leader of his poetry work-
shop: “Like the story of Chile itself in those years, the story of Juan Stein,
who ran our poetry workshop, is larger than life” (Bolaño 2004, 47). 7 He
wistfully remembers Stein as a visionary poet who, like himself, admired
Nicanor Parra and Enrique Lihn. The young poets from the workshop would
congregate at Stein’s house where they would discuss politics, literature, and
travel. In memory, Stein’s house becomes a utopic site of origins, the lost
home of his formative years. Maps of all kinds covered the walls generating a
thirst for exploration and adventure. At that site, the narrator also remembers
discovering the legendary story of Stein’s uncle. According to the poetry
teacher, he was the most important Jewish general and communist war hero
of World War II who died at the front lines at the age of thirty-nine. The
narrator acknowledges that after discovering the story of Cherniakhovski his
admiration for Stein became immeasurable and knew no bounds. With this
detail, Bolaño reveals a clear-sighted awareness of how restorative nostalgia
evades apprehension or attempts to eliminate it by recovering absolute truths
that exist in roots and origins stories.
Similar to the other authors and filmmakers in Unsettling Nostalgia,
Bolaño uses photographs as nostalgia-producing objects that are also capable
of producing uncertainty. In addition to the Cherniakhovski photo, the narra-
tor recalls seeing in Stein’s home a picture of Dr. William Carlos Williams
(1883–1963). The black and white image of the American poet, doctor, and
socialist implicitly evokes the memory of another doctor and socialist: Dr.
Salvador Allende Gossens. The photograph, usually considered what Mari-
anne Hirsch calls “a simple transcription of the real” (Hirsch 1997, 7), takes
on particular importance for the poetry group because it is an artifact from an
earlier time that represents shared values, but that also kindles intrigue. In
176 Chapter 6

Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory (1997), Hirsch

makes the case that family photos shape personal and cultural memory and
often solidify fictions: “Because the photograph gives the illusion of being a
simple transcription of the real, a trace touched directly by the event it
records, it has the effect of naturalizing cultural practices and of disguising
their stereotyped and coded characteristics. As photography immobilizes the
flow of family life into a series of snapshots, it perpetuates familial myths
while seeming merely to record actual moments in family history” (Hirsch
1997, 7). In La voz dormida the photo of the spirited young revolutionary
woman and child on the cover plays an essential role in the actual text. The
antique image evokes a sense of nostalgia in the characters as well as the
reader. By contrast, in Estrella distante, the photo of William Carlos
Williams, as well as all of the pictures in the novel, does not function to offer
an authentic historical snapshot. Instead, photos trigger the imagination, to
provoke a measure of uncertainty about the concept of transparency, and to
defamiliarize the reader so that we perceive ordinary objects or apparent
historical facts anew.
By interpreting Bolaño’s use of photographs as a mechanism to conjure
and question memory, we gain an understanding of how nostalgia can be
unsettling. The photo of William Carlos Williams becomes an artifact of
scrutiny for all of the poets and raises questions about authenticity, interpre-
tation, and the fabrication of lore. The characters ask, was it a montage
constructed from several photographic images? Was it a man that looked like
President Truman disguised as someone else, walking down the street in his
home town, incognito? Through these humorous hypotheses, the narrator
pokes fun at the process of idolization and invites readers to think about
montage and the illusions of the portrait. Bolaño deconstructs what Hirsch
calls the referential status that we assign to photos: “The illusion of the self’s
wholeness and plentitude is perpetuated by the photographic medium as well
as by the autobiographical act” (Hirsch 1997, 84). Bolaño’s reference to the
picture of William Carlos William is a way to point to the process of conceal-
ment that characterizes the act of representation. The narrator sees the photo-
graphic image as mediated and constructed, fragmentary and incomplete.
The text thus suggests that it might be “productive to see in the photograph
an analogue of the process of the subject’s construction which occurs- as it
does in autobiography- relationally in response to discursive practices”
(Hirsch 1997, 84). In Estrella distante, the poets examine the photo, but their
gaze is filtered through cultural, ideological, and emotional screens, which
influence the image that they envision.
This subjective and nostalgic process of viewing photographs is encapsu-
lated in Stein’s admission that above all, he wants to believe that the photo of
William Carlos Williams is authentic. This revealing comment should be
read in relation to the blurry black and white newspaper photos of Wieder
 Detective Pursuits of an Ironic Nostalgic 177

that the narrator uses to conclude that Wieder and Ruiz-Tagle are one. While
the narrator self-consciously utilizes the images of Stein and William Carlos
Williams as a means to stimulate hope and to put a heroic face on the utopian
ideology in which he believed, he uses the image of Wieder as a means to put
a face on the dominant ideology that he loathed. On the surface it is the
creation of the most extreme contrast possible. But the narrator seems
thoroughly aware that his characterization of Stein not only embellishes but
also draws from dominant notions of normative masculinity. We should re-
call that he acknowledges that after discovering the war story of Stein's uncle
(Cherniakhovski) his admiration for the poetry teacher became immeasurable
and knew no bounds. Bolaño thus dramatizes the process by which hetero-
sexual men construct gendered heroes and villains that become the protago-
nists of larger than life narratives that satisfy individual and collective fanta-
sies. Particularly in times of crisis, courage is invoked in an effort to cultivate
optimism, to counter political withdrawal, and to bolster unity through asso-
ciation with the esteemed paragon of virtue.
That restorative nostalgic vision is challenged consistently in the novel
through irony and metafiction. Time and distance alike contribute to the
development of utopian memories of community, and conversely dystopian
memories of rupture. Tracking down the elusive figure of the missing poetry
teacher becomes a commitment, but also an antidote for the monotony and
grief of inner and outer exile. In a quest for Stein, Bibiano (the narrator's
friend who stayed in Chile) pieces together a maze of texts. In that process,
he concludes that after leaving Chile, Stein had crossed into Nicaragua with
the Sandinista troops. In their imagination, he morphs into an implacable
figure who took on the epic proportions of a Hollywood hero. (Bolaño 2004,
60). But as the narrator admits, the very question of Stein’s identity becomes
nebulous. Like Wieder, Stein is a ghost-like figure that appears in flashes at a
distance. In a bar in Barcelona, the narrator identifies (or wants to identify)
the face of Stein in a thin and ragged soldier-like professor in a documentary
about the Sandinistas. This detail illustrates how Bolaño uses the voice of the
narrator to question the various intertexts (videos, photos, newspaper arti-
cles). If the narrator claims to follow Stein’s trajectory, it is admittedly based
on unreliable sources—an admission that challenges the heroic masculinist
myth. Bolaño integrates these sources into the text not to confirm their legiti-
macy, but rather to interrogate them and to highlight the gendered nature of
the legends of the left, and how they are generated and sustained through
nostalgia. Readers also learn that it is possible that all of the information that
Bibiano sends to the narrator about Stein and Wieder is an intricately woven
fiction invented to add intrigue to his dull, solitary life under the dictatorship.
If one key site of nostalgic origins is embodied in a stereotypical revolu-
tionary archetype, then the figure of the performance artist named Lorenza
allows the author to queer those roots. The narrative is situated midway
178 Chapter 6

through Estrella distante, notably at the novel’s center, and consists of a five-
page vignette that evokes the story of the real Lorenza Böttner (1959–1994).
As Carl Fischer points out, Lorenza was a Chilean born German transgender
performance artist whose life “defied geographical, gender, media, and ca-
nonical boundaries (Fischer 2016, 186). When she was born in 1959 in Punta
Arenas, Chile, she was assigned “male” and named Ernst Böttner. At age
nine, she had both arms amputated below the shoulder after an electrocution
accident. Her family stayed in Chile until 1973 at which point they returned
to Germany. Challenging the alienation of social exclusion that those deemed
“disabled” were forced to endure, she learned how to paint and draw with her
mouth and feet and graduated from the Kassel School of Art and Design. She
changed her name to Lorenza, publicly embracing a transgender feminine
identity, and rendered visible her armless body in photography and painting
that refused to accept beauty norms. As Paul B. Preciado argues, “if medical
discourse and modes of representation aim to desexualize and degender the
impaired body, Lorenza’s performance work eroticized the trans-armless
body, endowing it with sexual and political potency.” Lorenza placed her
own image at the center of an extensive archive of photography, painting,
drawing, video, and sculpture that she produced before dying of AIDS in
1994 at age thirty-five.
Lorenza’s life story obliquely responds to questions regarding the regula-
tory sociopolitical framework of the Pinochet dictatorship to the extent that
her unconventional art constitutes a creative disruption of the heteronorma-
tive, ableist, and masculinist ideologies of the Right that viewed any non-
conforming gender as deviant. But her story also exposes how the marginal-
ization of queer identities occurs across the political spectrum and within
democratic and dictatorial regimes. Bolaño seems to recall Lorenza nostalgi-
cally as a figure that overturned normative views of identity that have also
pervaded the left. Carl Fischer points out that Bolaño “invokes Lorenza in
Estrella distante to counter previous, more exclusive post-dictatorship Chi-
lean literary canons developed by an establishment in Chile that he consid-
ered vindictive and overly exclusive” (212). From a more critical perspec-
tive, Fischer questions Bolaño’s misgendering of Lorenza as “Lorenzo” and
the author’s description of her as “a hopeless romantic and tortured artist,
complete with a suicide attempt” (211). On the one hand, Bolaño’s narrative
lacks nuance and reinserts heteronormative assumptions manifested in mis-
gendering. On the other hand, the story of Lorenza allows Bolaño to queer
utopic roots. The brief but evocative description of Lorenza closes with a
telling remark. When the narrator thinks of Stein and Soto, he can’t help
thinking of Lorenza too, and, at times, he considers her the best poet of the
three (2004, 76). This final reflection problematizes heteromasculinist, cis-
gender, and ableist assumptions associated with nostalgic longing for heroic
models. In a word, the inclusion of Lorenza’s story challenges the obvious
 Detective Pursuits of an Ironic Nostalgic 179

exclusions of the conservative right-wing, but also tests prevailing accounts

of resistance that pervade the gamut of political parties on the left.
As Bolaño vindicates the memory of Lorenza, he also summons the mem-
ory of another queer artist, Pedro Lemebel, who inverted “not only rightist
narratives of the nation that focused primarily on its heterosexual subjects,
but also the hegemonic leftist narratives of a mourning to recuperate the
memory solely of the politically oppressed” (Fischer 191). As I noted in this
book’s introduction, Lemebel’s Tengo miedo torero (2001) depicts the chal-
lenges of a transgender woman (La loca del frente) in Pinochet’s Chile dur-
ing the mid-1980s. One passage from that novel succinctly captures Leme-
bel’s critique of the invisibility of trans and queer people in the revolutionary
struggles of the Left. As Queen contemplates leaving Chile, she knows that
her sorrow will be ignored since “a fairy’s tears have no identification, no
color, no taste; they have never watered any garden of illusions” (2003,
154). 8 Lemebel poignantly brings out the atrocities of the Right, but also the
sexist, homophobic and transphobic betrayals of the left. 9
While Estrella distante only implicitly alludes to Lemebel, Bolaño’s vin-
dication of his work is explicit in interviews and writings: “Lemebel doesn’t
need to write poetry to be the best poet of my generation. No one goes deeper
than Lemebel. And also, if that weren’t enough, Lemebel is brave. He under-
stands how to open his eyes in the darkness, in those lands where no one
dares to tread” (Bolaño 2011, 68). Bolaño goes on to say “he might be on the
side of the losers but that victory, the sad victory offered by Literature (capi-
talized, as it is here), was surely his. When everyone who has treated him like
dirt is lost in the cesspit or in nothingness, Pedro Lemebel will still be a star”
(Bolaño 2011, 68). Bolaño’s reflection on Lemebel and Lorenza arguably
stays on the surface, but in evoking their stories, he undermines the idealiza-
tion of heteronormative masculinity that informs the nostalgic political imag-
inaries of both the Right and the Left.

THE UNSETTLING TROPE OF DOUBLES

The use of intertexts serves to question the authority of any single account
while the use of the doppelganger, or the doubles trope, functions to compli-
cate unbending Manichean political divisions. As Franklin Rodríguez argues
in “Unsettledness and Doublings in Roberto Bolaño’s Estrella distante”
(2010), multiple characters in the novel bring out the tensions between divi-
sion and unity, victims and aggressors, destruction and construction. That
tension, Rodríguez asserts, challenges rigid ideologies by suggesting that the
self and the other are constructed from the same material (2010, 216).
Rodríguez’s interpretation of Wieder as the demonic double of the narrator is
convincing, but we can also trace unsettling parallels between Wieder and
180 Chapter 6

Stein. The legend of the poetry teacher involves a side story briefly detailing
his connection to a group of pilots known as the “Flying Chileans.” This
detail prompts readers to consider the similarities between masculinist con-
structions of left-wing heroes like Stein and right-wing figures like Wieder.
While their political ideologies are opposed, both are thrill-seeking poets and
pilots with a desire to search for new forms of literary expression that break
with the past. Together, Stein and Wieder form a Janus-like figure represent-
ed with each face looking in opposite directions.
These characterizations serve to underscore the convergences between
masculinist, heteronormative, and ableist nostalgic discourses across the
spectrum of dominant political ideologies. The narrator conjectures that
Stein’s last revolutionary struggle was fought in El Salvador in 1989 with the
Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). While he is never en-
tirely sure, the narrator clings to the belief or fantasy that Stein was one of
those fearless revolutionaries in San Salvador. Bibiano, who shares the narra-
tor’s conviction that Stein was with the FMLN in their last attack, searches
relentlessly for Stein’s family to inform them of his courageous acts and
untimely death. To his regret, Stein’s former house was abandoned, and no
surviving relatives were to be found. Bibiano locates a woman that knew the
Stein family; however, she informs him that Stein was one of the “silent
left,” not a militant. He was German, not Jewish, and had recently died of
cancer. When Bibiano journeys to the cemetery, he is unable to find Stein’s
grave. Ultimately, Bolaño deconstructs the myth of the heroic revolutionary
male by questioning Stein’s entire trajectory and identity, leaving only one
certainty; his mysterious disappearance days after the military coup.
The narrator’s act of digging deep into the histories that he thought he
knew reveals the potential of unsettling nostalgia. Wieder’s demise seems to
contrast with Stein’s, but the author invites us to think about their uncomfort-
able intersections. The narrator speculates that after Wieder’s sky-writing
celebrations of the coup, he was called upon to undertake a spectacular photo
exhibit. As I noted earlier, Wieder's sky poetry included verses such as “La
muerte es amistad” (Bolaño 2005, 90–91) [“Death is friendship”; Bolaño
2004, 80-81]. Based upon a self-denunciatory memoir published by a so-
called Lieutenant Muñoz Cano, the narrator gathers that Wieder’s photo
exhibit featured snapshots of the dismembered bodies of the regime’s female
victims. In this grotesque photographic aestheticization of torture and misog-
yny, Muñoz Cano claims to have recognized the Garmendia sisters torn apart
like mannequins in pieces. 10 With this narrative gesture, Bolaño unmasks the
antifeminist underpinnings of militarized masculinity and the gendered na-
ture of the glorification of violence and war. 11 It is striking that Muñoz Cano
recalls something elegiac, melancholic, and nostalgic in the photo exhibit
featuring the broken bodies of women. He wistfully recollects the atmos-
phere of camaraderie among the military men that the macabre display pro-
 Detective Pursuits of an Ironic Nostalgic 181

duced. Bolaño uses the perspective of a former collaborator to explore a

fascist nostalgia for kinship through a misogynist brotherhood in arms and
the belief in bloodshed, and specifically the subjugation of politically active
women, as means of national rejuvenation.
From my perspective, the idea of the twin or double in Estrella distante
does not denote a collapse of difference between the political ideologies and
practices of the Left and the Right. It is not a mirror image but rather a
refraction, or an obliquely reflected distorted image that haunts readers by
stirring thought on the points of convergence and divergence. If the author
critiques the masculinist and heteronormative nature of heroic narratives as-
sociated with the Left, he brings out the virulent misogynist cruelty of neo-
fascist ideologies of the Right. As the Valech Report (aka Chile’s official
torture report) reveals, sexualized brutality was systematically exercised by
the military regime to elicit a confession, to punish, to humiliate and to
ultimately eliminate the opposition (Stern, 2010, 290–92). Steve Stern points
out that the data collection forms and interviews conducted by the Valech
Commission “did not seek information about sexual violence. Nonetheless,
almost all the women brought up the topic without prompting. . . . The sexual
aggressions and violence included not only vaginal, oral, and anal rape, but
also sexualized insults, simulations of rape and forced witness of it, stripping
and groping, forced sex with prisoners and relatives, and penetration by
trained dogs, rats, and insects” (Stern, 2010, 296). While the Valech Report
broke new ground by recording gendered torture, the absence of the question
in the forms and interviews points to a broader myopic view that fails to
interrogate hierarchies of power and the relationship between gender and
violence. In light of that glaring blind spot coupled with the Valech Report’s
overdue publication in 2004, Bolaño’s depiction of Wieder in 1996 appears
even more stunning. Estrella distante constitutes an illuminating forerunner
that exposes ingrained misogynist ideologies that glorify male domination
and normalize sexualized methods of control. Wieder’s grotesque photo dis-
play of dismembered women’s bodies is unsuccessful, not due to the sadistic
misogyny in its making, but rather due to its unabashed exposure of cruelty
and its potential to incriminate the perpetrators of the regime.
At the same time, the photo exhibit’s aestheticization of misogynist sad-
ism is frighteningly reminiscent of countless documented and undocumented
murders cases outside the context of the dictatorship. The depiction of Wied-
er reminds readers of serial killers who have dismembered female victims
and photographed their bodies. We recall the feminicide, sexual assault, and
mutilation of hundreds of women and girls since the early 1990s in Ciudad
Juárez, which Bolaño meticulously depicts in his massive final novel 2666.
Published posthumously in 2004, the work ends Bolaño’s jarring investiga-
tion of misogyny initiated a decade earlier in Estrella distante. With the
depiction of Wieder and his morbid photo display of anti-fascist women,
182 Chapter 6

Bolaño signals a continuum of violence in which the murder of a female

body is considered the ultimate form of possession and the possession of a
woman’s body is viewed as the ultimate form of power.
The narrator’s subsequent search for Wieder allows the author to trace a
transatlantic web of fascist, misogynist, and neo-nazi publications in Europe
that link Chile, Spain, and Italy. He suspects Wieder’s participation in the
production of hard-core pornography and his potential involvement in the
unsolved murder of three actresses featured in the films. Through this detail,
the author once again maps the histories of exploitation and degradation of
women and illustrates the premise that violence is gendered. Bolaño unmasks
sexualized violence as the bedrock of militaristic culture in which masculin-
ity is defined in terms of dominance and aggression. Given the pervasiveness
of such toxic masculinity beyond the barracks and clandestine torture cen-
ters, it is unsurprising that perpetrators like Wieder are treated with impunity.
As the narrator recounts, his name appears in a judicial report (probably the
1991 Rettig Report) on the disappearance of political prisoners during the
transition to democracy, but the case never progresses. The ongoing impunity
that has benefitted the perpetrators is exemplified in the absence of the defen-
dant (Wieder) in the trial involving the Garmendia twins. The Mapuche
housekeeper who lived with them would testify at Weider’s trial in absentia.
Bolaño undercuts nationalist narratives of stability and order by weaving into
the story a silenced traumatic account within a larger framework of unad-
dressed mass atrocity crimes.

In her memory, the night of the crime was one episode in a long history of
killing and injustice. Her account of the events was swept up in a cyclical, epic
poem, which, as her dumbfounded listeners came to realize, was partly her
story, the story of the Chilean citizen Amalia Maluenda, who used to work for
the Garmendias, and partly the story of the Chilean nation. A story of terror.
When she spoke of Wieder, she seemed to be talking about several different
people: an invader, a lover, a warrior, a demon. When she spoke of the Gar-
mendia sisters, she likened them to the air, to garden plants or puppies.”
(Bolaño 2004, 110–11) 12

This public expression of long-standing collective suffering renders visible

the multiple and connected histories of imperialism and neo-imperialism
shaped by misogyny, racism, and classism. It is no wonder, then, that the
name Wieder in German means “again.” Against the backdrop of widespread
impunity and through the words of a Mapuche woman, Bolaño elucidates
how disillusionment in the present fuels nostalgic longing, in this case for a
pre-colonial past symbolized through images of nature and a longing for the
UP years personified by the Garmendia twins.
 Detective Pursuits of an Ironic Nostalgic 183

EPIPHANIC NIGHTMARES, UNMAKING MYTHS

Through the unsettling nostalgic mode, Bolaño not only overturns grand
narratives but also the conventions of the detective novel insofar as the stated
genre relies on the premise that the text incorporates important clues that
ultimately trail the reader to the final revelation of truth. Around the time that
Wieder is summoned for trial (1992), the narrator is sought out for clues by a
private investigator named Abel Romero. Whereas a restorative nostalgic
narrative might attempt to transmit an authoritative voice of truth and clo-
sure, Bolaño suggests that any narrative representation cannot offer more
than an incomplete interpretation. The unsettling characterization of Romero
contributes to this understanding of memory and representation. He is a
mysterious character, formerly considered a celebrity on the police force
during the Allende years, but the narrator’s description of the investigations
that brought Romero fame, reveals another side, hinting that he extracted
information through interrogation and torture. Again, Bolaño disallows read-
ers to indulge themselves in the illusion of a paragon of heroism as Abel
Romero seems to embody corruption and callous disregard for truth. The
author’s unmistakable reversal of the Cain and Abel trope functions to fur-
ther undermine established myths of good and evil.
A dream of symbolic destruction signals a moment of sudden revelation
for the narrator and brings the novel closer to an unsettling end. As the
investigation intensifies, the narrator dreams of a yacht full of festive passen-
gers. While he sits apart from the crowd as he writes a poem, a storm
emerges and capsizes the boat, pushing the travelers to cling to the wreckage.
The image is striking and reminiscent of the poem “The Yachts,” by the
aforementioned poet William Carlos William published in 1935. The poem
renders the rich as yachts competing in an ungoverned ocean while the work-
ing class is represented by the crew that crawls ant-like and is violently
thrown from the ship. The narrator’s dream-turned-nightmare marks a wa-
tershed moment in Estrella distante and functions as an awakening for the
narrator’s that brings to visibility his own sense of loss and regret. Adrift, the
narrator sees Wieder in the dream and realizes that they had been traveling
on the same boat: “he may have conspired to sink it, but I had done little or
nothing to stop it going down” (Bolaño 2004, 121–22). This sentence be-
speaks the tensions and remorse arising from inaction. His response is not to
deny what he envisioned in his dream, but to confront how his evasion of
responsibility had haunted him all along.
As in the case of Últimos días de la historia, the narrator cannot ignore a
profound sense of guilt for his lack of participation in the resistance against
the military coup and the ensuing violence of the regime. As such, when he
must identify Wieder for Romero, the outcome of that encounter is profound-
ly unsettling. For what he calls a “nauseating moment,” he sees himself in the
184 Chapter 6

image of Wieder “almost joined to him, like a vile Siamese twin” (Bolaño
2004, 144). The narrator interrogates his own trajectory and questions the
ethics of revenge. In the final scene, Romero secretly murders the suspected
man, but the full story remains beyond the reach of both the narrator and the
reader. As Amelia Simpson suggests in her study of crime novels from Latin
America: “The narrative technique of withholding in detective fiction con-
ventionally promises eventual revelation” (1990, 161). However, Bolaño,
like other Latin American detective novelists (i.e., Jorge Luis Borges, Leo-
nardo Padura, Ricardo Piglia), subverts that convention. The enigma remains
unresolved, leaving the reader to identify with the narrator’s feeling of doubt
and dissatisfaction. This open-ended conclusion not only compels the reader
to consider the impossibility of arriving at the indisputable truth, but it also
encourages us to contemplate questions of justice and the possibility of a
scenario in which an innocent man is condemned, and a guilty man remains
free.

AN UNFULFILLED LONGING

The narrator’s reconstruction of the story of Wieder, Stein, Lorenza, and the
Garmendia sisters is the story of something much larger. His search for these
symbolic characters reveals a process of engaging with memories of the coup
and the loss of utopian dreams. It is significant that when Romero locates the
narrator in Blanes, he is living alone, in poor health and unable to make ends
meet. He delves into literature’s dark corners in an attempt to unravel un-
solved crimes, but he also allows himself the pleasure of immersing himself
in positive Allende-era memories. Bolaño himself nostalgically wrote, “I
remember the days after the coup as full days, crammed with energy,
crammed with eroticism, days and nights in which anything could hap-
pen. . . . The experience of love, black humor, friendship, prison, and the
threat of death were condensed into no more than five interminable months
that I lived in a state of amazement and urgency” (2011, 53). Bolaño, like the
narrator, is confronted with the perpetually incomplete task of piecing to-
gether a “distant” story from which he becomes removed both geographically
and temporally.
If the characters in Estrella distante are among the many disappeared
whose remains will never be unearthed, how can Bolaño unearth their story?
He dramatizes what Michael Lazzara calls the “tension between the desire to
narrate the past and the difficulty of accessing that past” (Lazzara 2006, 150).
Bolaño points to the inadequacies of his search, but he also highlights the
failings of the justice system to deal with the effects of terror, structural
misogyny, and the chronic and cumulative injustice rooted in a long history
of genocide. But despite the threads of dark pessimism that zigzag through-
 Detective Pursuits of an Ironic Nostalgic 185

out the novel, I agree with Lila McDowell Carlsen that “Bolaño is not apa-
thetically anti-utopian; instead, he is an absurd critical utopian.” (McDowell
Carlsen 2014, 150). By illustrating the sources, uses, and trappings of uto-
pian thinking and nostalgic longing in a critically conscious way, Bolaño
unites what many consider incompatible. Readers find a striking model of
“unsettling nostalgia” that arises from a dual desire to piece together inspir-
ing stories of resistance to galvanize the uninspired present and to simultane-
ously catalyze critique of the contradictions and shortcomings that have
shaped revolutionary struggles.

NOTES

1. For more on Bolaño’s biography, see the book of interviews titled Bolaño por sí mismo
(2007) and The New Yorker article “Vagabonds: Roberto Bolaño and His Fractured Master-
piece” (March 2007) by Daniel Zalewski.
2. See Larry Rohter, “A Chilean Writer’s Fictions Might Include His Own Colorful Past,”
New York Times, January 27, 2009. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/books/28bola.html.
3. In the article “Unsettledness and Doublings in Roberto Bolañ o’s Estrella distante by in
Revista Hispá nica Moderna (2010), Franklin Rodríguez offers an insightful interpretation of
how the author unsettles readers. Whereas Rodríguez focuses on the uncanny and the potential
of the double to create suspense and reflection, the main theme of this analysis is the unsettling
potential of the nostalgic gaze.
4. “La mayoría de los que íbamos hablábamos mucho: no sólo de poesía, sino de política,
de viajes (que por entonces ninguno imaginaba que iban a ser lo que después fueron), de
pintura, de arquitectura, de fotografía, de revolución y lucha armada; lucha armada que nos iba
a traer una nueva vida y una nueva época, pero que para la mayoría de nosotros era como un
sueño o, más apropiadamente, como la llave que nos abrirá la puerta los sueños, los únicos por
los cuales merecía la pena vivir” (Bolaño 2005, 13).
5. “Para mí, ser poeta era, al mismo tiempo, ser revolucionario y estar totalmente abierto a
cualquier manifestación cultural, a cualquier expresión sexual, en fin, abierto a todo, a cualqui-
er experiencia con drogas. La tolerancia era . . . más que tolerancia, palabra que no nos gustaba
mucho, era hermandad universal, algo totalmente utópico” (Bolaño 2006, 38).
6. “Me sentí de pronto feliz, inmensamente feliz, capaz de hacer cualquier cosa, aunque
sabía que en esos momentos todo aquello en lo que creía se hundía para siempre y mucha gente,
entre ellos más de un amigo, estaba siendo perseguida y torturada. Pero ya tenía ganas de cantar
y de bailar y las malas noticias (o las elucubraciones sobre malas noticias) sólo contribuían a
echarle leña al fuego de mi alegría, si se me permite la expresión, cursi a más no poder (siútica
hubiéramos dicho entonces), pero que expresa mi estado de ánimo e incluso me atrevería a
afirmar que también el estado de ánimo de las Garmendia y el estado de ánimo de muchos que
en septiembre de 1973 tenían veinte años o menos” (Bolaño 2005, 27–28).
7. “La historia de Juan Stein, el director de nuestro taller de literatura, es desmesurada
como el Chile de aquellos años” (Bolaño 2005, 56).
8. “Porque las lágrimas de las locas no tenían identificación, ni color, ni sabor, ni regaban
ningún jardín de ilusiones” (2001, 176).
9. Teaching Lemebel’s novel at the University of Oregon and later at Keene State College
was very enriching. I am especially grateful to Jedidiah Crook who worked through this
material with me during an independent study.
10. The image of the broken, dismembered mannequin-like bodies seems to parody the
visual art of the neo-avant-garde artist Carlos Leppe who, as Idelber Avelar has observed,
foregrounded the body of a transgender person in pieces. The goal of the photographic work,
Avelar writes, was to “submit the body to segmentation, denaturalization, and resignification”
(Avelar 1999, 167). But while some cultural critics praised the revolutionary quality of Leppe’s
186 Chapter 6

neo-avant-garde work, Bolaño problematizes its aesthetics by highlighting how a similar pro-
ject could have appealed to supporters of the regime.
11. Franklin Rodríguez correctly points out that the photographic exhibition and aerial show
function “as a clear intertextual reference to the violence, cruelty, glorification of war, militar-
ization, and destructive gestures of the Italian Futurists” (Rodrí guez 2010, 212).
12. “La noche del crimen, en su memoria, se ha fundido a una larga historia de homicidios e
injusticias. Su historia está hilada a través de un verso heroico (épos), cíclico, que quienes
asombrados la escuchan entienden que en parte es su historia, la historia de la ciudadana
Amalia Maluenda, antigua empleada de las Garmendia, y en parte la historia de Chile. Una
historia de terror. Así, cuando habla de Wieder, el teniente parece ser muchas personas a la vez:
un intruso, un enamorado, un guerrero, un demonio. Cuando habla de las hermanas Garmendia
las compara con el aire, con las buenas plantas, con cachorros de perro” (Bolaño 2005, 120).
 Conclusion
Longing for Resistance

THE ELUSIVE MEMORY OF MICHELLE MARGUERITE

PEÑ A HERREROS

To illustrate the historical, affective, and thematic underpinnings of this

book, I began with the story of Victor Pey in the prologue, and I now close
with the story of Michelle Marguerite Peña Herreros whose photo adorns the
cover of this book. It was during the same journey to Chile that I described in
the introduction that I saw a photo of Michelle Peña hanging alongside other
pictures at the center for the organization called the Agrupación de Famili-
ares de Detenidos Desaparecidos (Collective of Relatives of the Detained and
Disappeared). A friend who was on that journey with me, Alice MaCall,
drew my attention to the large black and white photo of Peña fixed to the
wall. As Gabriela Zúniga (former socialist militant and prominent member of
the AFDD) discussed the challenges faced by families in the association who
have been searching for justice as a collective since 1975, Peña’s striking
profile loomed large. Curious to know her story, Alice suggested a search for
information at the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, the archive containing photo-
graphs and testimonies of family members and survivors. After looking
through files that recorded the identities of the disappeared, Alice found
Michelle Marguerite Peña Herreros. She was born on July 27, 1947, and
detained, tortured, and disappeared by the regime’s agents in June 1975 at
the age of twenty-seven. She was eight months pregnant. Years after my trip
with Alice to the archive, I returned to Peña Herreros’s story. What stood out
to me was her family’s long-standing struggle, punctuated by multiple losses

187
188 Conclusion

and transatlantic exile. It is a story that begins during the Spanish Civil War
and tragically ends in Pinochet’s Chile.
By piecing together information from the archive with accounts online,
we can reconstruct an image, albeit hazy. She was the daughter of Gregoria
Peña, who was born in Madrid around 1930. Along with other family mem-
bers, all active members of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE),
Gregoria Peña crossed the Pyrenees in February 1939 to flee Franco’s forces
at the end of the Spanish Civil War. Her father, who had fought on the
Republican side, was taken as prisoner and detained in a concentration camp
in France, most likely in the Roussillon Province, such as the Camp de
concentration d’Argelès-sur-Mer between Perpignan and the border. Gregor-
ia remained in Toulouse with her sister and parents for approximately a
decade and gave birth in 1947 at age sixteen to Michelle. When Michelle was
about five years old, Gregoria left for Chile with her daughter. Around 1952,
they reunited with family who years earlier had escaped to Valparaíso on the
ship called the Winnipeg, which I described in the introduction. Similar to the
case of Victor Pey, the Peña family made a home in Chile thereafter. Accord-
ing to her mother, Michelle grew up surrounded by Spanish refugees, hearing
the stories and songs of the Spanish Civil War and adopting the ideals con-
veyed in that atmosphere. 1 During the Popular Unity, Michelle studied elec-
trical engineering at the Universidad Técnica del Estado and worked at the
Institute of Social Studies in Latin America (INESAL). Among her acquain-
tances was Michelle Bachelet, the future president of Chile after the dictator-
ship. Following the 1973 coup, Michelle Peña risked her life to work in
underground networks to support the Socialist Party in hiding. In September
1974, the secret police had intensified their search for her and invaded her
mother’s home. When they did not find Michelle, they kept Gregoria Peña
under surveillance. On June 20, 1975, Michelle was arrested by the DINA
with her partner Ricardo Lagos Salinas in La Villa Japón in the neighbor-
hood of Las Rejas. They were both interrogated and tortured in the covert
detention center Villa Grimaldi.
Today, Michelle Peña’s whereabouts are unknown, as well as the fate of
her unborn child. Some key witnesses, including Luz Arce, confirmed in
their testimonies to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that Michelle
Peña Herreros was detained and tortured at Villa Grimaldi. The former leader
of the MIR, Gladys Díaz Armijo, also confirms seeing Peña at Villa Grimaldi
in June of 1975. Others also suggest that Peña gave birth to a baby at the
Military Hospital (Hosmil), but there is no further information regarding her
child (Arce 2004, 248). 2 It is believed that Peña’s body was thrown into the
sea near San Antonio in 1975. 3 Her case has been archived in the Museum of
Memory and Human Rights in Santiago. Gregoria Peña, Michelle’s mother,
filed an official complaint in 1978, but the charge has not resulted in any
formal indictments. 4
 Conclusion 189

Peña’s story, which cannot be captured in these pages, is the kind of story
that perturbs, but it also stimulates the imagination and provides a source of
inspiration for authors and filmmakers. We are reminded of the unanswered
questions surrounding the disappearance of the Garmendia sisters whose
ghosts haunt Roberto Bolaño’s Estrella distante. We also recall the aspira-
tions and nightmares involving the life and death of Teresa González Puerto
who spent her last days in a Francoist prison in Almudena Grandes’s El
corazón helado. Grandes and Bolaño offer examples of how to depict the
untold stories of women and other marginalized voices who challenged pow-
er hierarchies, and at the same time offer what Michael Lazzara calls a
“reflection on the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of accessing and narrat-
ing the past” (Lazzara 2006, 135). It is the combination of careful contextual-
ization and the recognition of the leaps and breaks in the process of recall
that make their nostalgic representations so compelling, meaningful, and
instructive.

VISIBILITY AND INVISIBILITY

While Michelle Peña’s story of transatlantic ideological struggle is largely

unknown, her portrait has been used by some as a symbol of resistance
against the regime’s brutality. Only days after our trip to the archive, Alice
and I saw her image again, this time in a multimedia performance called
Cuerpo quebrado (Broken Body). Directed by Natalia Cuéllar and performed
in Santiago in 2008, the production was meant to pay homage to three preg-
nant political prisoners detained and tortured by the regime’s secret police:
Michelle Peña, Cecilia Labrín, and Reinalda Pereira. The performance dra-
matizes an interrogation, electrocution, and drowning of the three women.
Influenced by the Butoh form, the performance does not have any dialogue,
and the sound is reduced to a disturbing baroque musical score. The ethereal
noise of sloshing water alludes to the “death flights” to which the women
detainees and their fetuses in utero were subject. The spectral images and the
interchanging red, blue and green lights projected on the stage, combined
with the absence of dialogue, transmit the ghostly presence of the disap-
peared political prisoners and the limitations of language to convey the dam-
age of state terror.
Three years after the production of Broken Body, documentarian Rodrigo
Díaz directed a film about Michelle Peña titled Michelle (2011). In contrast
to the performance, the documentary not only foregrounds Peña’s detain-
ment, but also a panorama of political activism involving Michelle’s entire
family. Early in the film, Michelle’s aunt Maru focuses on her sister Gregoria
(Michelle’s mother) and her experience as a young single mother living in
postwar France as a Spanish Republican refugee. The filmmaker combines
190 Conclusion

archival photos of Michelle as a child with her aunt’s commentary to give

viewers a window into the development of her character and values. By
reaching back to a time before the Pinochet dictatorship and by emphasizing
the intersectional nature of identities, the filmmaker allows us to imagine a
fuller portrait of one of the regime’s victims and to comprehend the compet-
ing forces and ideologies predating and surrounding Michelle’s arrest. The
film also highlights the political repression of Spanish Republican exiles in
Chile during the 1950s under Carlos Ibáñez del Campo thereby upending the
notion that the 1973 coup was an aberration. The film thus shares the con-
cerns that Diana Taylor explains in the article “Trauma as Durational Perfor-
mance” in Rites of Return. Taylor persuasively argues that we must bear
witness not only to the personal loss, but to “a system of power relations
hierarchies, and values that not only allowed but required the destruction of
others (277).
In considering the differences between these two artistic representations
of Michelle Peña’s story, I am also reminded of Taylor’s argument that
“Memory is a tool and a political project—an honoring of those who are
gone and a reminder to those who will listen that the victimizers have gotten
away with murder. . . . If we focus only on the trauma we risk evacuating the
politics.” (277). To the extent that the performance Broken Body seeks to
render visible the gendered character of state torture, it constitutes a thought-
provoking form of memorialization and a valuable contribution to ongoing
debates in Chile on the irreparable damage inflicted on women prisoners by
the military regime. Furthermore, the performance involves non-convention-
al methods that capture the audience without commentary. However, if the
performance also seeks to combat the erasure of women’s political histories,
then it falls short as the piece is worrisomely devoid of a contextualized
rendering of struggle.
The documentary Michelle takes a more traditional approach to storytell-
ing and, as a result, it lacks the experimental appeal that Broken Body
achieves. The film is a more nostalgic work, but offers the kind of contextu-
alization that allows viewers to go beyond the image of the tortured figure.
Spectators of Broken Body, on the other hand, are left to assume Peña’s
political affiliations, social values, and identity. Cuéllar’s attentiveness to the
victims’ corporeal pain and the perpetrators’ sadism overrides insights into
the context in which such violence was produced. Peña’s cultural and politi-
cal genealogy has the potential to illuminate the relationship between Chilean
and Spanish collectivities and the dual military apparatuses that aimed to
systematically eliminate them. The film Michelle sheds light on the ways in
which her incredible story transcends national borders and underscores the
continuities between political contexts, while the performance Broken Body
inadvertently reduces the image of Peña to a suffering pregnant body in
detainment.
 Conclusion 191

In some ways, the performance illustrates the problematic appeal of gen-

dered symbols and feminized icons in anti-dictatorial memorial reconstruc-
tions. Broken Body bespeaks a yearning for a revolutionary mother and her
stolen or aborted progeny, seen as irreversibly effaced from history. It allows
us to consider common rhetorical strategies (emotional appeals to suffering),
themes (rupture, discontinuity), and gendered motifs (maternal sacrifice) that
run through both left-wing and right-wing political discourses and for
contrasting goals. Given its intersections with gender, revolution, and mascu-
linist violence, Peña’s story powerfully dialogues with the Spanish story of
the real Trece Rosas and its fictionalization in the novel La voz dormida. As
this book discusses, Las Trece Rosas is the iconic name of a group of thirteen
young women of the Unified Socialist Youth (JSU) who were executed by a
Francoist firing squad after their detention and coercive interrogation in the
Ventas Prison in Madrid. In her book Fearless Women, Tabea Alexa Lind-
hard uses the example of the Trece Rosas to address “the conflicts and
contradictions that participation in revolutions and wars entails for women”
(28). She maintains that the symbol of idealized femininity and youth, epito-
mized by the rose, displaces these women’s real experiences of marginaliza-
tion. These examples suggest that simple “restorative” nostalgia traverses the
political spectrum from Right to Left. These findings have important impli-
cations for the broader field of nostalgia and post-dictatorial thought to the
extent that they challenge categorical assumptions about the commemoration
of the regime’s victims.

COMPARING NOSTALGIAS

In her book The Sexual Politics of Time: Confession, Nostalgia and Memory,
cultural critic Susannah Radstone argues,

Criticism of contemporary nostalgia remains vague concerning questions of

universalism versus historical specificity and homogeneity versus heterogene-
ity. In the main, contemporary nostalgia criticism posits nostalgia as a feature
of postmodernism, while avoiding discussions of genealogy and history. Ab-
sent too from discussions of contemporary nostalgia culture are any compara-
tive studies of different contemporary nostalgias: questions concerning differ-
ences of form, genre and medium remain largely unexplored. (Radstone 2007,
130)

Through close readings of nostalgic Spanish and Chilean novels and films, I
have sought to distinguish between different types of nostalgia and address
“the emergence, meanings, significance and appeal of [nostalgia’s] varied
practices and representations” to which Radstone refers (Radstone 2007,
129). In Unsettling Nostalgia, we have seen how authors and filmmakers
192 Conclusion

have engaged contentious memories about conflict, exile, incarceration, and

torture in the context of the military dictatorships. In different ways, they
mourn the political defeat of the regimes’ opponents and uphold their dis-
courses that were either distorted or occluded in the public sphere. The paral-
lels between nostalgic modes and affective registers in cultural production
that respond to and “resist” the hijacking of the Second Republic and Popular
Unity is precisely what makes this comparison resonant. We trace an evoca-
tive continuity between Spain and Chile that goes even beyond the topic of
authoritarianism and its corresponding policies of political and cultural re-
pression.
In the case of La voz dormida, Dulce Chacón draws from oral testimo-
nies, diaries, national government records, and other documentary resources
to reconstruct a constellation of memories of Republican women who suf-
fered in Francoist prisons during the postwar years. Chacón seeks to be the
mouthpiece of ex-political prisoners who fought to survive in hopes that one
day they would publicly expose the state crimes committed against them and
also to continue the struggle for social change. But, as I have argued, the
author’s sentimental portrait of Republican groups as flawless communities,
as well as her eagerness to create an unambiguous representation of truth,
characterizes her novel, to some degree, as the type of reductive nostalgia
that Fredric Jameson criticizes in the essay “Nostalgia for the Present”
(2006). In La voz dormida, Chacón seeks to recycle the style and atmosphere
of postwar Spain and to bring together traumatic memories of prison experi-
ences into a narrative that ultimately silences incongruities and contradic-
tions. The result is the erosion of historical complexity and the elimination of
nuances of subjectivity. It seems paradoxical that the author critiques a dua-
listic narrative of the war while supplanting it with her own narrowly con-
strued plot. What is more, it could be argued that the novel creates the
illusion that readers are recuperating what they have lost.
In Últimos días de la historia, the narrator sustains a nostalgic longing
through the memories of the cultural and political milieu that the Pinochet
regime sought to eradicate. Brodsky vindicates the struggles of the regime’s
opponents of various political stripes, and at the same time, he stresses the
impossibility of the task of “working through” traumatic memories of state
violence. The narrator is a melancholic character struggling with the intract-
able loss of family, friends, and the political ideals that he had invested in the
Popular Unity. However, unlike the archetypal melancholic subject who can-
not pinpoint the source of pain, Brodsky’s protagonist is mindful of the
origin of his suffering and attempts to confront it through an artistic perfor-
mance of memory. If melancholia is the internalization of the lost object,
then in the protagonist’s public performance residues of loss are exploded
out of the body/machine. However, the damage remains or lingers, and the
“acting out” continues. No matter how much he tries to work through his
 Conclusion 193

despair, the protagonist’s attempt is never enough, mainly due to his aware-
ness of the profound authoritarian legacies that continue to haunt Chileans in
the aftermath of the dictatorship.
Brodsky’s nostalgia offers a critical interrogation of the contemporary
governmental and societal move in Chile towards reconciliation, resolution,
and closure. This approach to memory and nostalgia might find its echo in
the tactics of the FUNA (meaning “to unmask”) movement. This memory
community is made up of victims, families, and activists seeking to confront
violators and the apathetic or complicit public that oppose the imprisonment
of perpetrators. The FUNA movement advocates the commemorative and
ideological procedures surrounding the locating, identification, and reburial
of the disappeared. In Salt in the Sand (2007), Lessie Jo Frazier offers a brief
description of this organization’s project:

Exemplifying cathartic memory were the funa (slang for denouncing or public
outing) protests that began in the late 1990s and were modeled on an Argen-
tine form of protest in which documented torturers who were not formally
tried were “outed” by protestors who marched to their neighborhoods and
workplaces to plaster notices and hold demonstrations detailing their
crimes. . . . The state declared them illegal as a form of vigilante justice;
activists in turn pointed to the failure of the state to widely prosecute these
crimes. (Frazier 2007, 345)

Frazier points out that one of the key critiques of the movement was its
“portrayal of perpetrators as monsters who should have no place in civil
society” which “obscured the ways in which civil society was and still is
implicated in political persecution and injustice” (Frazier 2007, 345). In this
regard, Brodsky’s novel, as well as Bolaño’s and Grandes’s, broadens the
work of the protestors insofar as they painstakingly underscore civil society’s
silent complicity in dictatorial repression. Their form of unsettling nostalgia
provokes further debate about the dangers of forgetting the systematic vio-
lence of the military regimes while it also questions the current neoliberal
political-economic model that the regimes implemented and violently de-
fended.
Also compelling is the comparison between Grandes, Chacón, Castillo,
and Astudillo since it allows us to observe various acts of transgenerational
communication of memory between mothers and their children. Through real
and fictionalized protagonists, we witness a range of responses to dictatorial
traumas and the differences between the first, second, and third generations,
as well as the tensions within each of these. In the case of El corazón helado,
the first-person narrator attempts to understand his own families’ political
affiliations and motivations and in doing so comes to identify with his distant
Republican grandmother while severing ties with his siblings and parents. In
some ways, Álvaro frustrates generational logic as he is in-between the sec-
194 Conclusion

ond and third generations. It was his grandmother who experienced the Civil
War as an adult and was violently “disciplined” for her identification with
the Republican side. Interestingly, her son Julio (Alvaro’s father) is also part
of the first generation since he experienced the war as an adolescent, but
identity positions (age, gender, politics) make his war experience contrast
with his mother’s. Through these characters and the blurry political and
generational divides that they traverse, the novel complicates simplistic ap-
proaches to generational logic, and it also problematizes the facile binary
logic of the two Spains.
Intergenerational exchanges between characters allow Grandes to look
sharply at the post-Franco present and reflect upon both the victims of Fran-
coist repression and the beneficiaries of the dictatorship. By bringing Álvaro
into dialogue with Raquel, a character not fully explored in Unsettling Nos-
talgia, Grandes widens and deepens her scope. Raquel can be positioned
within the third generation since it was her grandparents who fought in the
Civil War on the Republican side while her parents were born after the war in
exile. Unlike her mother and father who became saturated with stories of the
Civil War, Raquel finds in her grandfather’s account a meaningful narrative
with which she chooses to identify. In her journey to redress the economic
and social injustices committed against her family within the context of
ongoing impunity in the post-Franco democracy, it is the combination of
nostalgia and melancholy imbuing her grandfather’s war stories that fuels
Raquel’s move forward. This character, like her grandfather Ignacio, is ren-
dered with fine brush strokes and comes to embody the critical consciousness
and historical awareness that the novel upholds. The author reclaims margi-
nalized histories by exploring the perspectives of vanquished Republicans,
but also by moving beyond the privileged male heterosexual vantage point of
the central character Álvaro. Raquel might find her counterpart in the fiction-
al character Tensi in La voz dormida and the real Macarena Aguiló in Calle
Santa Fe. For these daughters and granddaughters of the victims, salvaging
the stories of their ancestors and identifying with them is a shared commit-
ment.
By analyzing these novels and films together, we not only gain a better
understanding of how nostalgic representation might either flatten or con-
versely expand our perception of the past and its relationship to the construc-
tion of contemporary identities, but also how nostalgia is felt in the body.
While this book only explores this area to a certain extent, it points to a
number of ways in which literature and film portray nostalgia as an embod-
ied experience triggered by smells, sights, and sounds. Aspects of the charac-
ters’ bodies beyond the brain play a significant and physically constitutive
role in cognitive processing. For instance, the explicit allusion to the Thirteen
Roses in La voz dormida by Dulce Chacón is one of the most powerful
examples of how nostalgia is embodied on both the intradiegetic and extrad-
 Conclusion 195

iegetic levels of the novel. Inside the world described to the reader, the
figurine from Joaquina’s belt is not only a symbol of a heroine for Tomasa,
but also a material relic that triggers her memory as she caresses it. Readers
witness how nostalgia is embodied through tactile experience and becomes a
means to connect with lost loved ones while coping with ongoing physical
and mental suffering. On the extradiegetic (outside) level, Chacón uses the
acknowledgments to convey her gratitude for the experience of seeing first
hand Julia Conesa’s original letters written from the Ventas prison where she
was executed. If we consider Chacón’s treatment of objects that enkindle
nostalgia within the comparative framework of this study, we notice impor-
tant similarities and differences. While letters and photographs become po-
tent objects that stimulate nostalgia in all of the works analyzed in Unsettling
Nostalgia, the active critical engagement with that nostalgic experience var-
ies greatly. As noted, reading Estrella distante alongside La voz dormida
brings out the greatest contrast between nostalgias since Bolaño’s use of
photos in the novel does not function to offer an authentic historical snap-
shot, but rather to trigger the imagination and to provoke a measure of uncer-
tainty. There is no trace of restorative nostalgia that is not cross-examined
through irony and parody. This discussion challenges the notion that nostal-
gia is entirely uncomplicated, uniform, and incapable of co-existing with
critical consciousness and historical inquiry.

THE FUTURE OF UNSETTLING NOSTALGIA

A comparison of the interrelated yet under-examined twentieth-century his-

tories of Spain and Chile generates insights about the role of nostalgia in the
ongoing process of memory and identity formation. Overturning negative
assumptions about nostalgia, this study offers examples of the kind of nostal-
gia that Jameson vindicated in his essay “Walter Benjamin, or Nostalgia.” He
writes “But if nostalgia as a political motivation is most frequently associated
with fascism, there is no reason why nostalgia conscious of itself, a lucid and
remorseless dissatisfaction with the present on the grounds of some remem-
bered plenitude, cannot furnish as adequate a revolutionary stimulus as any
other” (1969, 68). The works in Unsettling Nostalgia allow us to theorize the
diverse varieties of nostalgia as well as the meaning of nostalgia’s allure.
Through narrative strategies such as metafiction and irony or self-conscious
melancholic registers, unsettling nostalgic novels and films and their multi-
ple hybrid variants, not only generate thought-provoking critiques of the
military regimes, but also of the uncritical modes of nostalgic memory that
unwittingly ignore the analytical challenges that memories propose. My anal-
ysis illustrates how nostalgic narratives might overcome narrow formulations
of the victims to prompt a critically-conscious response to the lingering sense
196 Conclusion

of loss in the aftermath of state violence. It also shows that nostalgia be-
speaks a desire to draw from histories of resistance to engender deeper vi-
sions of justice today.
It is my hope that by redefining nostalgia and casting light on its political
and social relevance, Unsettling Nostalgia helps to move post-dictatorial
memory studies in new directions. Indeed, there are many areas where work
needs to be done to better understand the process and meaning of nostalgic
memorialization after dictatorial atrocity. This book situates nostalgia at the
intersection between identity, narrative fiction, and documentary film. Still to
be written are explorations of the relationship between post-dictatorial nos-
talgia and representation in museums, television series, fiction film, and the
graphic novel. Why have these areas boomed in recent years? How might
these genres aestheticize nostalgia, and what is the effect? Might their nostal-
gic scripts support or question stereotypical modes of identification? Another
area in need of further analysis is the conservative Franco-era domestic nos-
talgia conveyed in magazines and school textbooks. How did these texts use
a reactionary nostalgia to reinforce gender norms and to delegitimize the
reforms of the Second Republic? What similarities might we find in the case
of Pinochet's Chile? Apart from the question of genre, we might consider
several issues that deserve more considerable attention, like the relationship
between nostalgia and the representation of non-heteronormative bonds in
the context of pre-dictatorial social movements and clandestine resistance.
Although the scope of this book is modest, it lays a foundation for unex-
plored horizons. These chapters frame nostalgia as an emotional response to
the cultural transformations that were violently forged and solidified through
militarized authoritarianism in Spain and Chile. Nostalgic narratives become
a tool to create an ethical distance from them. If we push the discussion
around nostalgia in different directions, we see a combination of nostalgic
impulses that contribute to the process of redress and catalyze commitments
to human rights and solidarity. By giving detail and dimension to lives flat-
tened in history, the authors and filmmakers in this book reveal a new para-
digm that contributes to current notions of belonging and identity. They show
that the process of return to sites and memories can spur pain and a sense of
loss, but it can also ignite transformation and connection.

NOTES

1. Note that this testimony is recorded in the Chilean Socialist Party Archives.
2. Luz Arce, 2004, The Inferno: A Story of Terror and Survival in Chile, Madison, WI:
University of Wisconsin Press.
3. See Archivo de Fondos y Colecciones: Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos
4. See also http://www.memoriaviva.com/English/victims/pena-herreros.htm.
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 Index

absence, 110 Avelar, Idelber, 85

accountability, 78 awareness, 94
action, 16 Aylwin, Patricio, 35
Actos melancólicos (Gundermann), 15 Aznar, José Maria, 32
Aguiló, Macarena, 80, 93; interview with,
91 Bachelet, Michelle, 1, 33, 35; GAM and,
Aguirre Cerda, Pedro, 3 66
Alarcón, Rolando, 30 Bachelet Martínez, Alberto, 33
Allende, Isabel, 37 Balmes, José, 29, 52n7
Allende, Salvador, 1, 23, 65 beliefs, 59, 90
allusion, 83; to Lemebel, 47; metaphor belonging, 34
and, 72; narratives and, 103 Benet, Juan, 19; Nunca llegarás a nada by,
Almonacid Zapata, Fabián, 3 71
American Graffiti film, 13 Benjamin, Walter, 13, 57, 62
anarchists, 3 Betancourt, Renard, 93
anti-fascism, 17 Bolaño, Roberto, 50, 185n1; Estrella
anti-nostalgia, 36, 41 distante by, 166; translations of, 51
anxiety, 88 Boler, Megan, 22
Arce, Luz, 87 Borrás, Enriqueta, 110, 111
archives, 97–116; archival footage, 80; Boym, Svetlana, 9, 12, 21; on restorative
information from, 188 nostalgia, 68, 83; on utopia, 11
ARMH. See Association for the Brodsky, Roberto, 44
Recuperation of Historical Memory Bru i Llop, Roser, 29
articles, 14, 94n3, 120; by Herrmann, 20; buildings, 66
by Zatlin, 139–140 Bunk, Brian, 127
Association for the Recuperation of burial, 2
Historical Memory (ARMH), 32 Buscando a Allende documentary, 2
Astudillo, Carolina, 48, 98, 116n1 Bush, George W., 32
atrocities, 101, 135; confrontation of, 42
audience, 62, 115
automatons, 72

211
212
Calle Santa Fe documentary, 47–48; by
Castillo, 79, 80; longing for resistance
in, 81–86
Camus, Albert, 61
Canela, Libertad, 108–110
Cánovas, Isabel, 111
capitalism, 65; neoliberalism capitalism, 5;
opportunism and, 148
Cárcel de Mujeres (Cuevas), 118–119, 126
La casa de los espíritus (Allende, I.), 37
Casas, Francisco, 61
case studies, 8
Castillo, Carmen, 43, 47, 93; Calle Santa
Fe film by, 79, 80; in exile, 81; Marchi
and, 89; photographs and, 83; in
voiceover, 82–83
Catalonia, 48, 52n7
Cernuda, Luis, 28–29
Chacón, Dulce, 44, 110; interviews by,
119; La voz dormida by, 49, 117–136
characterizations, 119, 149, 161
children, 87, 152; adult children, 102;
childhood memories, 50, 156–162;
daughters of MIR, 90–91; of survivors,
116
Chile, 56, 58, 175; comparison between
Spain and, 16–20; Law of Historical
Memory, 33, 35, 122; Pinochet and,
22–27
Chilean Popular Unity government (1970-
1973), 6, 98; portrayals of, 17
Chilenas en armas (Zalaquett), 78
cinematography, 81, 82
Cities in Ruins (Enjuto Rangel), 29
Civil Obedience: Complicity and
Complacency in Chile since Pinochet
(Lazzara), 26
El Clarin newspaper, 3–4
class status, 146; sexism and, 149
CNT. See Confederación Nacional del
Trabajo
collective devastation, 69
collective experience, 60
collective responsibility, 50
collective trauma, 14
commemoration, 31
communes, 90
communism, 26
compassion, 112
Index
compulsive reenactment, 88
conceptualization, 15; of haunting, 41; of
nostalgia, 11–51; of postmemory, 39; of
unsettling nostalgia, 23
the Concertación government, 54, 55
Conejeros, Francisca, 108–110
Conesa, Julia, 130
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
(CNT), 3
connection, 123–135
conservative nostalgia, 27
conspiracies, 171–174
context, 58, 88, 147; contemporary
nostalgia, 31; dictatorship as, 71; of
oppression, 124; relationship in, 91; of
violence, 190
control, 131, 146; of organizations, 77–78
El corazón helado (Grandes), 49
Les Corts Women’s Prison, 108; history,
114
coups, 19, 25, 166; anniversary of, 38;
footage after the, 80
courage, 123–135
Courier font, 106
Courtship Customs in Postwar Spain
(Martín Gaite), 24, 104
creative reenactment, 88
critical consciousness, 67; memory and,
22; nostalgic remembrance and, 153
Cuba, 87, 88, 90
Cuevas, Tomasa, 118–119, 126
cultural beliefs, 59
cultural continuity, 7
cultural imagination, 45, 46
cultural minorities, 77
cultural production, 5; gender and, 79;
nostalgia and, 31
cultural survival, 116
culture of memory, 92
Davis, Fred, 12
death, 18; of Franco, 26; of martyrs,
130–131; of Pey, 4
dehumanization, 44
democracy, 73
De monstruos y faldas documentary, 48,
97–116; unsettling nostalgia in,
106–113
derailment, 88
 Index 213

desencanto, 34 events, 59; catastrophe of, 69, 119

desire, 34, 60; objects and, 147; politics executions, 114; testimony about, 130
and, 56 exile, 80, 145; Castillo in, 81; in France,
dichotomies, 56 103, 108, 144; internal exile, 31;
dictatorships: context of, 71; Lazzara on, 69; nostalgia and, 27–29
representations of, 121. See also experiences, 60; of audience, 115;
specific dictatorships collective devastation as, 69; as
Dinges, John, 4 firsthand, 5–6; of Grandes, 140; identity
“Díptico español” (Cernuda), 28–29 and, 65; Jameson on, 99; narratives of,
disappearance, 189 19; postmemory and, 132; of women,
discontinuity, 70 101
discourses, 55, 121; homophobia and, 61; exploration, 55, 145
nostalgic discourses, 19; restorative exposure, 5
nostalgia in, 70; weapon of, 23
diseases, 124 families, 143, 146; kinship and, 156;
disenchantment, 55, 84; generations and, representations of, 153
58; nostalgia and, 34–36; in Spain, 37 Family Frames (Hirsch), 99, 132, 162
disenfranchisement, 77 Fatherland and Liberty (Patria y Libertad),
dislocation, 91 27
displaced nostalgia, 5 female subjectivity, 89
disruption, 42 feminist perspective, 14, 22; as
dissidence, 92 transatlantic, 19; women’s movements
documentary, 21, 82, 99; by Castillo, 47; and, 35
nostalgia and, 80–81; Spain and, 97 fiction, 36–39
The Documentary: Politics, Emotion, film: guerrillas in, 45; nostalgia mapping
Culture (Smaill), 21 and, 36–39
dual longing, 97 Fischer, Carl, 42
Duchesne Winter, Juan, 78, 94n2 forgetting, 73–74
Durruti Column, 3 FPMR. See Frente Patriótico Manuel
Rodríguez; Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic
education, 43–44 Front
elections, 3, 84; participation in, 53 France, 103, 108; exile communities in,
Eltit, Diamela, 73 144
emotion, 89; landscapes of, 94; literature Franco, Francisco, 16; death of, 26;
and, 136; nostalgia and, 7 speeches by, 24
empathy, 92 Francoist regime (1939-1975), 2, 6, 118;
The End of History and the Last Man women and, 128
(Fukuyama), 64 Frazier, Lessie Jo, 60; on reconciliation, 73
Enloe, Cynthia, 112 Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez
Enríquez, Miguel, 43, 80, 115 (FPMR), 77
equality, 7, 127, 134; contempt for, 146; Fukuyama, Francis, 64
demand for, 60; gender equality, 21 future, 73–74
escapism, 56–57 The Future of Nostalgia (Boym), 12
essays, 139; by Graham, 104–105; by
Jameson, 14 Gabriela Mistral Metropolitan Cultural
Estrella distante (Bolaño), 50, 166 Center (GAM), 65; Bachelet, Michelle
ethics, 91, 150; dilemmas and, 92; ethical and, 66
subjectivity, 133 game, 109
euphemisms, 102 Garcés, Joan, 4, 32
214 Index

García, Antoñita, 130 historical awakening, 58–63

Garzón, Baltasar, 4, 32 historical moments, 56
gaze, 116 history, 6, 7, 140; Les Corts Women’s
Gazzara, Ben, 68 Prison, 114; literary histories, 19;
gender, 92; cultural production and, 79; women in, 118
gendered violence, 104–105; gender Hite, Katherine, 34, 65; on Pinochet, 38;
equality, 21; nostalgia and, 20–22, When Romance ended by, 53
77–94; symbolism and, 101 Hodgin, Nick, 15
gender norms, 7, 78, 151; challenge to, homogeneous memory, 8
121; oppression and, 102 homophobia, 61
Generalitat de Catalunya, 111 homosexuality, 60
generations, 58, 140; disenchantment and, hoop rolling, 109
58; multigenerational population, 17; Hopenhayn, Martín, 36, 54, 75n3
postmemory and, 99 Horowitz, Sara, 46
genres, 8, 20–22; horror films as, 40; human rights, 54; accountability and, 78;
memory and, 21 violations, 8
Gen X, 5 Hutton, Patrick, 13
Glazer, Peter, 133 Huyssen, Andreas, 36, 40; on palimpsests,
government, 33 115
Graham, Helen, 135; essay by, 104–105 hybridity, 82
Grandes, Almudena, 28, 44; experience of, hymns, 30
140; Léon and, 145; novels by, 49, 136 hypocrisy, 70
El gran vuelo film, 103
Greek, 83; mythology, 61 idealization, 41; nostalgia and, 122; of
Gualleros, Maricarmen, 111, 113 past, 82
La guerra persistente: Memoria, violencia ideals, 113; of womanhood, 118
y utopia (López Quiñones), 37; utopia identity, 64, 109, 153, 155; continuity of,
and, 119, 137n1 125, 131–132; experiences and, 65;
guerrilla fighters, 45 intersectionality and, 14, 155–156;
La guerrilla narrada (Duchesne Winter), memory and, 9, 63; power and, 147;
78 reclamation of, 122
Guevara, Che, 12 ideology, 21, 27, 156; centrality of, 35;
guilt, 151; survivors and, 71 enforcement of, 104; media and, 112;
Gundermann, Christian, 15 misogyny and, 105; response to, 106;
Guzmán, Jaime, 26 shift in, 18; struggle between, 64
Guzmán, Patricio, 85 Ilie, Paul, 139
imagery, 40, 101, 127; repetition of, 107;
Haas, Liesl, 35 womanhood and, 104, 108
hagiography, 67, 126 The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia
harm, 91 (Lowenthal), 12
haunting, 59; trauma and, 39–41 imperialism, 114, 182
hegemony, 14–15; alternatives to, 65 impunity, 54
Herman, Judith, 69 inaction, 71
heroism, 68, 112, 127; characterizations individualism, 55
and, 119; false heroism, 71; heroines El infierno (Arce), 87
and, 135; narrative and, 155; influence, 63, 100
photographs and, 174–179 inner exile, 139–163
Herrmann, Gina, 20, 77, 86 institutions, 105
heterosexuality, 154 internal exile, 31
 Index
interpretations, 46; of resistance, 149
intersectionality, 51n1, 122, 191; identity
and, 14, 155–156
interviews, 55; with Aguiló, 91; by
Chacón, 119; Marchi in, 87–88
invisibility, 154, 189–191
ironic nostalgia, 165–185
irruption, 38
la Izquierda Unida, 143
Jameson, Fredric, 13, 39, 74; essays by, 14;
on experience, 99
Jelin, Elizabeth, 81, 127, 133
Jewish community, 120
Johns, Alessa, 44
JSU. See Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas
Juan Carlos (King), 26
Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas (Unified
Socialist Youth) (JSU), 42, 146, 150
kissing, 124
Kissinger, Henry, 26
Klee, Paul, 62
Labanyi, Jo, 23, 31; on desencanto, 34; on
discrepancies, 58; on haunting, 40
LaCapra, Dominic, 57; on acting out, 88
Lafourcade, Enrique, 68
Lagos, Ricardo, 35, 53, 75n2
languages, 51
El lápiz del carpintero (Rivas), 41–42
Latin, 114
Lázaro, Emilio Martínez, 42
Lazzara, Michael, 26, 38, 85; on exile, 69;
on imagery, 40; on reflection, 189
El lector de Julio Verne (Grandes), 28, 49
leftwing nostalgia, 27
Leggott, Sarah, 143
Lemebel, Pedro, 45; allusion to, 47
Léon, María Teresa, 145
letters, 130, 150
Liberation Theology, 26
Lindhard, Tabea Alexa, 191
Linville, Rachel, 44
literature, 166; emotion and, 136
Llamazares, Gaspar, 143
Lodge, David, 165
longing, 55, 106; dual longing, 97;
historical awakening and, 58–63;
215
resistance and, 1–9, 69–73, 81–86;
unfulfillment of, 184–185
Lopate, Phillip, 82
López Quiñones, Antonio, 37, 52n10,
137n1
loss, 74, 84
Loureiro, Ángel, 39
Lowenthal, David, 12
Lumpérica (Eltit), 73
Macdonald, Sharon, 129
Machado, Antonio, 30
Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR),
45
mapping, 36–39
Marchi, Margarita, 80; Castillo and, 89;
interview with, 87–88
The Mares of the Apocalypse (Las Yeguas
del Apocalipsis) group, 61
marginalization, 7, 155
Martín, José, 82
Martín Gaite, Carmen, 24; Courtship
Customs in Postwar Spain by, 104
martyrs, 24, 127; death of, 130–131
Marx, Karl, 13
Marxism, 72
masculinity, 146, 149
Masiello, Francine, 36
Mateu, Rosa, 110
Meacham, J. A., 126
meaning, 79, 93, 165; disruptive, 116;
sanctuary of, 125
media, 12; ideology and, 112; power and,
106; representations in, 24–25. See also
specific types of media
memoir, 80, 145
memorials, 94
memory, 15, 67, 92; childhood and, 50,
156–162; critical consciousness and,
22; dislocation and, 91; of dissent, 152;
excavation of, 7; gaps in, 18; genres
and, 21; homogeneous memory, 8;
identity and, 9, 63; incongruities of, 81;
lack of, 136; modes of, 41–42;
motivation and, 167–169; nostalgia
and, 20; nostalgic memory, 19, 124,
141–143; novels of, 144; persistence of,
74; post-dictatorial memory, 19; song
and, 125; spaces and, 66–67;
216 Index
transgenerational communication and,
93; transnational redress and, 31–32;
traumatic memories, 56. See also
postmemory
memory activism, 32
memory culture, 37
memory work, 37–38; contradictions and,
46; texts and, 9
men, 134
metaphor, 93; allusion and, 72; for
storytelling, 113
militancy: motherhood and, 77–94;
structures of, 79
military, 18; militaristic culture, 102
military dictatorships, 1
MIR. See Movimiento de Izquierda
Revolucionaria; Revolutionary Left
Movement
misogyny, 105, 148; normalization of, 105;
representation and, 147
modernism, 14
modernization, 54; individualism and, 55
modes: of memory, 41–42; of storytelling,
103
Mohanty, Chandra, 22
Moix, Ana María, 155
Mooney, Pieper, 86
morality, 123, 161
Mossos d’Esquadra, 111
motherhood, 107, 152; absence and, 110;
militancy and, 77–94
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, 78
Moulian, Tomás, 54
movements, 88; grassroots, 93; women’s
movement, 35
Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria
(MIR), 47, 77; daughters of, 90–91;
Operación Retorno and, 92
Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende,
30
music, 30; perspective and, 115. See also
song
myth, 62, 133; Greek mythology, 61;
mythologization and, 85; narrative and,
103; self-acclaiming, 70; unmaking of,
183–184
The Myth of Sisyphus (Camus), 61
narratives, 5, 20, 73; allusion and, 103;
construction of, 111; contrast of, 104;
of experience, 19; goals of, 103;
hegemony and, 14–15; heroism and,
155; oral narrative, 59; position and, 98;
reception of, 51; self-consciousness
and, 16
Narratives of Nostalgia, Gender and
Nationalism anthology, 23
narrators, 134; reflection and, 63
Nash, Mary, 118
National-Catholic apparatus, 109, 149
nationalism, 23
neighborhood, 103
Nelson, Alice, 98
neo-fascism, 27; poetry and, 50
neoliberalism, 64, 84; neoliberal capitalism
and, 5, 55
Neruda, Pablo, 3
nostalgia, 8; conceptualization of, 11–51;
contemporary nostalgia, 31; contrast
between, 50; cultural production and,
31; disenchantment and, 34–36;
documentary and, 80–81; emotion and,
7; escapism and, 56–57; exile and,
27–29; exposure and, 5; forms of, 136;
gender and, 20–22, 77–94; idealization
and, 122; inner exile and, 139–163;
irony and, 165–185; mapping return of,
36–39; memory and, 20; modes of
memory and, 41–42; perceptions and,
12; performance and, 57; postwar
prison, 117–136; rejection of, 22; for
Second Spanish Republic, 29, 144; as
tool, 29–31, 135–136; value of, 74;
Wilson on, 125, 129. See also specific
types of nostalgia
nostalgia critique, 39–41
nostalgic discourses, 19
nostalgic memory, 19, 124, 141–143
nostalgic models, 7
nostalgic perspectives, 140
nostalgic remembrance, 153
novels, 6, 141, 144; by Grandes, 49, 136;
guerrillas in, 45
Nunca llegarás a nada (Benet), 71
objects, 102, 120; desire and, 147
O lapis do carpinteiro (Rivas), 18
 Index
Operación Retorno, 87, 90; MIR and, 92
oppression: context of, 124; gender norms
and, 102
oral history, 86
oral narrative, 59
organizations, 3; control of, 77–78
palimpsests, 170–171; sites and, 113–115;
tropes of, 66
Palomita blanca (Lafourcade), 68
passivity, 112
past, 56; Benjamin on the, 62; idealization
of, 82; representation of, 123
patriarchy, 91, 151; violence and, 153
Patria y Libertad (Fatherland and Liberty),
27
patriotism, 24
patterns, 87, 110, 119; opposition of, 134
Payne, Leigh, 41
Peña, Michelle, 51, 187–191
Penã Brea, José, 128
perceptions: nostalgia and, 12; restorative
perceptions, 9
Pérez Galdós, Benito, 28
Pérez-Sánchez, Gema, 155
performance, 58; Butoh, 189; Eltit in, 73;
nostalgia and, 57; representations and,
59
perspectives, 100; lack of, 122; music and,
115; nostalgic perspectives, 140
Pey, Victor, 2–5, 10n2
photographs, 114, 127; Castillo and, 83;
heroism and, 174–179; post-
photography age, 106; screenshots and,
85, 89, 93
Pickering, Jean, 23
Piñera, Sebastián, 84
pink tide, 33
Pinochet, Augusto, 16, 63; arrest of, 34,
38; Chile and, 22–27; Kissinger and,
26; in Spain, 26
Pinochet Regime (1973-1989), 6
plot, 129; subplot, 154
poetic nostalgia, 11–51
poetry, 28; censure of, 155; neo-fascism
and, 50
policy, 65
political apathy, 22
political mobilization, 29–31
217
politics: desire and, 56; poetic nostalgia
and, 11–51
Portales, Diego, 25, 65
post-dictatorial memory, 19
postmemory, 39, 99; experience and, 132;
generations and, 99
postwar, 100; exploitation, 148; nostalgia
and prison, 117–136; restorative
nostalgia and, 118–123
poverty, 67
power, 63, 149; identity and, 147; media
and, 106
present, 56
Preston, Paul, 2, 24, 35
prison: nostalgia and, 117–136; prison
communities, 123–135; visits to, 109
prisoners, 120, 135; political prisoners, 98
process: historical, 140; of remembrance,
121
progeny, 26
programs, 25
Pronzato, Carlos, 2
property, 147
PSOE. See Spanish Socialist Workers
Party
PSUC. See Unified Socialist Party of
Catalonia
publications, 74
Pueyo, Albert, 103–104
Pueyo Jornet, Clara, 103–104
Queer Transitions in Contemporary
Spanish Culture (Pérez-Sánchez), 155
Quílez Esteve, Laia, 100
radical nostalgia, 133
Radstone, Susannah, 14, 191
Ramona Para Brigade, 85
Rangel, Cecilia Enjuto, 29
reclamation: of cultural continuity, 7; of
identity, 122
reconciliation, 73
reconstructions, 44
re-contextualization, 100
redress, 115–116
reductive nostalgia, 15; mode of, 41, 42
reflection, 58; critical reflection, 41;
Lazzara on, 189; narrators and, 63
218 Index

reflective nostalgia, 81; restorative sacrifice, 91, 112; faith and, 131
nostalgia, 121 Salt in the Sand (Frazier), 60
reflexive nostalgia, 12; restorative and, 13; Sarlo, Beatriz, 40
stasis and, 13 scandals, 38
refugees, 2 screenshots, 85, 89, 93
regimes, 4; environment of, 58; targets of, Second Spanish Republic (1931-1939), 6;
80 nostalgia for, 29, 144; proclamation of,
regression, 74 143
regret, 88–89 self-acclaiming myth, 70
rejection, 22, 153; of nostalgia, 22; of self-consciousness, 74; narratives and, 16;
tenets, 26 remembrance acts as, 47
relationships, 62; in context, 91; militancy self-effacement, 68
and, 90–91; parent-child, 79; tensions Serrat, Joan Manuel, 30
in, 113 sewing machines, 101–104, 107
remembrance, 92; nostalgic remembrance, sexism, 134; classism and, 149; racism
153; process of, 121 and, 17
Reminiscing as a Process of Social sexual exploitation, 147; prostitution and,
Construction (Meacham), 126 147–148
reparations, 40 sexual identity, 60, 64
representations, 21, 68, 122; of dictatorial sexuality, 59, 154; agency for women in,
rule, 121; of families, 153; guerrillas 150–151, 154; liberation and, 60, 61;
and, 45; in media, 24–25; misogyny repression of, 60
and, 147; of past, 123; performance shame, 13
and, 59 silence, 71, 131; harm and, 91; invisibility
Representing the Holocaust (LaCapra), 57 and, 154
repression, 25, 97; sexuality and, 60; sites Silva, Emilio, 32
and, 114 sites, 113–115
resilience, 107; women and, 121 Smaill, Belinda, 21
resistance, 98, 131; collective Smith, Sidonie, 79
responsibility and, 50; interpretations social activism, 93
of, 149; longing for, 1–9, 69–73, 81–86; society, 106
women in, 78 solidarity, 55, 97; transatlantic solidarity,
respectability, 112 29–31; vindication of, 7
restorative nostalgia, 22–27, 28; Boym on, song, 30; women and, 124–125
68, 83; deterioration by, 25; discourse sounds, 102, 107
of, 70; mode of, 41, 42; postwar and, spaces, 66–67
118–123; reflective nostalgia, 121; Spain, 97; Amnesty Law in, 32;
reflexive nostalgia and, 13 comparison between Chile and, 16–20;
The Rettig Report, 35 disenchantment in, 37; Pinochet in, 26
Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), 27 Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), 2;
Richard, Nelly, 85–86 historiography of, 118; nostalgia and
risk, 89 exile after, 27–29; Republicans and,
Rites of Return (Hirsch and Miller), 43 117; stories from, 38
Rivas, Manuel, 18, 120; El lápiz del Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE),
carpintero, 41–42 32; members of, 188
Rodríguez Zapatero, José Luis, 122 speeches, 65; by Franco, 24
Romeu Alfaro, Fernanda, 129, 130 stasis, 13
Ryan, Lorraine, 147 State Repression and the Labors of
Memory (Jelin), 133
 Index
statues, 33
stereotypes, 110, 118, 134–135
Stern, Steve, 59; on forgetting, 73–74
stories, 155; antihero and, 68; of longing,
18; Spanish Civil War, 38
storytelling, 103; metaphor for, 113
subjugation, 105, 148
surveillance, 104
survivors, 58; children of, 116; guilt and,
71; loss for, 84
symbolism, 69, 101–104; ghosts as, 40
Tannock, Stuart, 11, 57, 69
Tengo miedo torero (Lemebel), 45, 61
terminology, 15, 114; desencanto, 34;
unsettling nostalgia as, 6, 16, 97
testimony, 49, 117, 129; distortion of, 132;
about executions, 130
texts, 52n6, 120; anti-nostalgic, 36;
memory work and, 9
Thatcher, Margaret, 32
Theses on the Philosophy of History
(Benjamin), 62
Thomas, Gwynn, 33, 35
tone, 68
trade, 65
transatlantic feminist perspective, 19
transatlantic solidarity, 29–31
transgenerational communication, 43;
memory and, 93
transnational redress, 31–32
trauma, 4, 49; collective trauma, 14;
haunting and, 39–41; Herman on, 69;
loss and, 74; motherhood and, 107;
traumatic memories, 56
Las trece rosas film, 42, 128
triggers, 11
tropes, 179–182; haunting as, 41, 59;
palimpsests as, 66
Twilight Memories (Huyssen), 36
typeface, 106
Últimos días de la historia (Brodsky),
46–47; unsettling nostalgia in, 53–74
UNCTAD. See United Nations Conference
on Trade and Development
Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia
(PSUC), 103
219
Unified Socialist Youth (Juventudes
Socialistas Unificadas) (JSU), 42, 146,
150
United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD), 64–65
unsettling nostalgia, 14–16;
conceptualization of, 23; in De
monstruos y faldas, 106–113; future
and, 73–74; mode of, 41; terminology
of, 6, 16, 97; in Últimos días de la
historia, 53–74
utopia, 1, 119, 185; Fischer on, 42; Johns
on, 44
The Valech Report, 35
values, 24, 124; as anti-fascist, 17;
nostalgia and, 74; reinforcement of, 126
Ventas women’s prison, 44
victims, 40; commemoration of, 31
violence, 100; context of, 190; emergence
of, 105; gendered violence, 104–105;
patriarchy and, 153; systems of, 101
visibility, 189–191
voiceover, 107; Castillo in, 82–83
voices, 107, 152; depictions of, 17
von Kempelen, Wolfgang, 71–72
La voz dormida (Chacón), 49, 117–136;
patterns in, 110
war, 38, 147; women and, 20. See also
postwar
Weld, Kirsten, 25
Whelan, Gerardo, 67
When Romance Ended (Hite), 53
Wieder, Carlos, 50
Wilde, Alexander, 38
Wilson, Janelle, 5, 11–12; on nostalgia,
125, 129
womanhood, 104, 108; ideal of, 118
women, 35, 128; experiences of, 101; in
history, 118; inner exile for, 140;
mobilization of, 77; participation of, 78,
86, 97, 151; political prisoners, 98;
resilience and, 121; in resistance, 78;
restrictions for, 48; role of, 67; sexual
agency for, 150–151, 154; song and,
124–125; war and, 20; womanhood,
104, 108
220 Index

Writing History, Writing Trauma Young, James, 94

(LaCapra), 57
Zalaquett, Cherie, 78
Yearning for Yesterday (Davis), 12 Zatlin, Phyllis, 139–140
Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis (The Mares of
the Apocalypse) group, 61
 About the Author

Lisa DiGiovanni is Associate Professor of Spanish Peninsular and Latin

American Studies with a joint appointment in the Departments of Modern
Languages and Cultures and Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State
College (USA). She is also affiliated faculty in Women’s and Gender Stud-
ies. Her interdisciplinary research and teaching centers on representations of
war and dictatorial violence in twentieth and twenty-first century Spain and
Latin America. She focuses primarily on Spanish and Chilean narrative and
film that render visible the multiple traumas related to state repression and
militaristic culture. She has published in journals including Journal of Latin
American Cultural Studies, Journal of Romance Studies, Periphērica: Jour-
nal of Social, Cultural, and Literary History, Anales de la literatura
española contemporánea, World Literature Today, Chasqui, and has contrib-
uted to the books The Dynamics of Masculinity in Contemporary Spanish
Culture, Cinema and the State-Tortured Body, Memory-Nostalgia-Melan-
choly: Re-imagining Home in a Time of Mobility, and Gender and Violence
in Iberian and Latin American Cinemas.

221