Signed for being born in democracy, young fiction writers who deal with the Malvinas conflict such as Sebastián Ávila, author of “Ovejas”; Sebastián Basualdo, writer of When I saw you fall; and Nicolás Correa, author of Heroin: The Gaucho War, reflect on the contribution and his views of history and the challenges involved in fiction merging representations of a war conflict with other themes such as love, family relations and sexual diversity.
Talk about war without the central issue being war. To merge the social and political conflict in the Malvinas Islands with the problems that went through the 1990s and 2000s, such as depoliticization, ideological disputes, social disbelief, conflicted youth and the visibility of sexual diversities.
The gaze of the young post-conflict generations proposes a breadth that removes Malvinas from the solemn place that fictions occupied, strips it of the “duty to be” and gives it a freshness that can be daring (and even politically incorrect). But always, in any case, open the game and stretch the limits a little more.
In one play, a trans girl stars in a dramatic love story and has Malvinas as the backdrop; in another, the story of a young teenager in the 90s who wants his stepfather, an ex-combatant, to want him. After years of classic and time-honored literary productions, such as that of Rodolfo Fogwill (Los Pichiciegos) or Carlos Gamerro (The Islands), the daughter generation of democracy recovers conflict from new approaches that question the status quo of the representation of war and, with some self-confidence, encourages you to challenge a little more.
“Malvinas is a horrendous and incomprehensible phenomenon, and that is why fiction has so much power and at the same time such an open panorama ahead of it. Talking about war is not just talking about the war aspect. I found it interesting to do it from the plane of dreams, psychic reality and the dreamlike. The island is what is dreamlike. Malvinas was a kind of war-fiction, I think that any other more classic historical event does not allow much play”, explains Sebastián Ávila, author of the novel Ovejas, which tells the evolution of a lost patrol on the islands and was the winner of the novel FuturoCK 2021 prize
Sebastián Basualdo, author of When I saw you fall, a book that tells the relationship of a 15-year-old boy with his ex-combatant stepfather, adds: “The best thing that can happen with a fiction is to have some degree of irreverence. But that must be accompanied by a clear social, political and historical awareness. I think we have a more emotional look at the Malvinas, in which other symbolic values appear: networks of secrets, lies and the unsaid.”
Democracy, our flag
The authors consulted agree that having been born and raised in democracy constitutes a fundamental element in this phenomenon, although they recognize themselves as being crossed by the affective dimension of the conflict and affected by the absence of the state role that never, in all these years, told them about the Malvinas through school or university.
In this same sense, they consider that war was always represented as a milestone of the “end of the dictatorship”, when in reality the dimensions and complexities that the conflict goes through over the islands exceed the dictatorship and manage to leave multiple traces on democracy.
“I think that being born without the stigma of dictatorship in itself takes a great deal of weight on us, and in turn Malvinas has a stigma that this generation wanted, in some way, to get rid of. The biggest problem is reducing Falkland Islands to war and reducing war to dictatorship; this is a procedure that civil society did in the 1990s to exonerate the guilt of having given its support to the dictatorship,” explains Ávila.
“There is an affective relationship that moved me to address the Malvinas, but at the same time I had a great ignorance of history. We didn't have that training at school: we saw ex-combatants on the street and on trains, but they didn't tell us about them from the State,” adds Basualdo.
Literature, then, is configured as an area at least a little more just with the Malvinas War, in relation to the role of the State and even of the academy itself: the subject was addressed in short stories, in novels and even in poetry, where the invisible planes of the conflict appear in a lot of ways.
“In the 1990s, although already in democracy, there was a process of unawareness and depoliticization that deepened with the menemato, under which the ex-combatant was left in a broken place. It was a process of social disarticulation that even today, I think, is not restored, because the right wing appropriated the symbolisms. There was a good attempt during Kirchnerism, but it has not corrected the pain,” Correa reflects.
The rebellion of youth
The future is feminist, and it is also of youth, who dare to make small revolutions in traditional spaces and jeopardize pre-established limits. The figure of the man, the male, brave and fearless is resumed and questioned from a less classical perspective.
Taking this limit to the maximum and even generating some discomfort. “I put my ass for the country”, repeats the narrator of Heroína: the gaucho war, which bursts into a fictional scenario written by men and starring men, to give us a bold and transgressive look at the conflict over the Falklands. Correa, its author, had the opportunity, after the publication of his book, to share the experiences with three ex-trans fighters from Chaco, Entre Ríos and Santiago del Estero.
“Malvinas has the dimension of being a national patriotic motive, it is a kind of milestone in history that seems untouchable, and I think that doing operations is, in itself, fun,” says the writer.
“It seems to me that Falkland veterans don't question us the approaches we do in fiction because it's just that, fiction. And it seems to me that this allows us to have a small generational rebellion,” says Ávila.
Basualdo, for his part, grew up in Villa del Parque, in the City of Buenos Aires, in a family in which Malvinas was very present. His stepfather was an ex-combatant and his adolescence was crossed by the search for this man to love him.
“When I was 15, I joined the Naval School because I had decided that I was going to recover the islands for him, I was convinced of that. This experience was a whole family movement and was the basis for writing this book,” explains Basualdo, who believes that this book provides a look at the existential problems of ex-combatants and their post-conflict family members.
Born in 1983, another young representative of this generation is Cristian Godoy, a short story writer who has a look of torsions where reality becomes literature. In the story A Fácil Arrow, the author tells the story of the doorman of a building posing as a former Falkland fighter and invents stories of false heroism.
The eternal return and outstanding debts
Although female feathers can be found when diving into the subject, as is the case with the renowned Patricia Ratto or Lara Segade, the truth is that there is a lack of women or sexual dissidents who write fiction about the Malvinas in contemporary literature.
It seems that fiction about the islands is still a stronghold starred by men and written by men: nothing that cannot be extrapolated to history in general. In a way and in many areas, literature lags behind the dynamics and fluidity of social demands.
“There needs to be these kinds of narratives, different, with other approaches and approaches. What are 20-year-old boys and girls writing about Malvinas? Then, we can discuss what real impact that work has on society. For example, I am interested in knowing if 'Heroin' can be used to talk about war but also to talk about ESI,” Correa reflects.
“Poor ex-combatants.” “They're all crazy.” “They live claiming.” In 2022, we still hear these phrases, as exponents of a somehow fossilized tragedy, as opposed to other tragedies that change with the passage of time and history. “Malvinas is not closed nor do I think it will be closed, so there is a kind of eternal return. Malvinas is our unfulfilled promise”, concludes Ávila.
Source: Telam S.E.
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