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Mario Benedetti As Propagandist: ‘Them’ and ‘Us’ in the Political Essays of 1971–1973

2010; Routledge; Volume: 87; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14753821003693784

1478-3428

Stephen Gregory,

Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1See relatively early examples, from Jaime Mejía Duque's ‘Ensayo y compromiso en Benedetti’, La Palabra y el Hombre, 13 (1975), 21–27 and Nils Castro, ‘Benedetti: la moral de los hechos aclara su palabra’, Casa de las Américas, 89 (1975), 78–96, both written by fellow adherents of Benedetti's pro-Cuban, anti-American politics, to what has become, more than twenty years later, a motive for routine celebration across the board in Carmen Alemany et al., Mario Benedetti: inventario cómplice (Alicante: Univ. de Alicante, 1998). 2Federica Rocco, ‘Entrevista con Mario Benedetti’, Studi di Letteratura Ispano-Americana, 32 (1999), 81–98 (p. 84). See also the interview with Hortensia Campanella, ‘Mario Benedetti: a ras de sueño’, Anthropos, 132 (1992), 25–32 (p. 32). 3Among many others, see the now classic accounts by Regis Debray, A Critique of Arms, trans. Rosemary Sheed, 2 vols (London: Penguin, 1977) and Jorge Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the Cold War (New York: Knopf, 1993). 4Gloria de Cunha-Giabbai, Mario Benedetti y la nación posible (Alicante: Univ. de Alicante, 2001), 50. She does not provide an analysis of the two volumes herself, preferring some brief remarks on the later much truncated anthology (to which I return below), and throughout downplaying Benedetti's politics in favour of what she sees as the continuing relevance of his ethics. 5Mario Benedetti, Crónicas del 71 (Montevideo: Arca, 1972) and Terremoto y después (Montevideo: Arca, 1973). Hereafter, all page-references to these two books will be given in the text, preceded by the abbreviations Crónicas or Terremoto. 6They can usefully be read alongside the essays, interviews and the occasional poem of Cuaderno cubano (1969, expanded 1971), the essays of El escritor latinoamericano y la revolución posible (1974), the poems, stories and songs of Letras de emergencia (1973) and the verse narrative El cumpleaños de Juan Ángel (1971). 7For some recent examples, see the sections dedicated to the years 1967–1973 in Juan J. Arteaga, Uruguay, breve historia contemporánea, 2nd ed. (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Eonómica, 2002) and Benjamín Nahum, Breve historia del Uruguay independiente (Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, 2003), the first largely approving of the changes brought about by neoliberalism since the 1970s, the second mostly hostile to them. See also, though in a very different vein, Chapter 2 of Vania Markarian, Left in Transformation. Uruguayan Exiles and the Latin American Human Rights Networks (London/New York: Routledge, 2005). The fact that three so very different books should follow the same basic historical outline suggests how widely held this view of the basic structure of Uruguayan history in the 1960s and early 1970s is. 8For some earlier but still influential accounts of this history, see Óscar Bruschera, Las décadas infames (Montevideo: Linardi y Risso, 1986); Benjamín Nahum et al., El fin del Uruguay liberal (Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, 1998); Gonzalo Varela, De la república liberal al estado militar: Uruguay 1968–1973 (Montevideo: Ediciones del Nuevo Mundo, 1988); and Germán Rama, La democracia en Uruguay (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1987). 9Francisco Panizza, Uruguay: Batllismo y después (Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, 1990), 196. The whole discussion ranges through Chapters 6 to 8. In a similar vein, Rafael Bayce discusses Pacheco's contribution to the polarization of Uruguayan politics and its role in mobilizing and politicizing the armed forces in his Cultura política ur uguaya (Montevideo: Fondo de Cultura Universitaria, 1989), 31–37. Students and trade unions have likewise been reported as conceptualizing the national political scene in black-and-white terms (see Nahum, El fin del Uruguay liberal, 164 and 168). 10Clara Aldrighi, La izquierda armada. Ideología, ética e identidad en el MLN-Tupamaros (Montevideo: Trilce, 2001), 41–42, 117 and 148. 11Quoted in Samuel Blixen, Sendic (Montevideo: Trilce, 2000), 158. 12Quoted in Fernando Butazzoni, Seregni-Rosencof, mano a mano (Montevideo: Aguilar, 2002), 236, n. 72. 13I assess Benedetti's activism in the group he helped to lead in Stephen Gregory, ‘The Road or the Inn? Mario Benedetti as Activist and El Movimiento de Independientes 26 de Marzo’, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 14:1 (2008), 25–47. 14Unsuccessful in 1971, a streamlined, post-dictatorship reincarnation of the same coalition was elected in October 2004, having dominated the capital's politics since 1989 and, in 1999, only missing out on national government because of constitutional and electoral changes introduced in 1996. See Constanza Moreira, Final de juego (Montevideo: Trilce, 2004) and Adolfo Garcé and Jaime Yaffé, La era progresista, 2nd ed. (Montevideo: Fin de Siglo, 2005). 15Mario Benedetti, ‘Postdata 1963’, in his El país de la cola de paja (1960), 7th ed. (Montevideo: Arca, 1968), 127–49 (p. 127). 16Mario Benedetti, ‘¿Qué hacer con el Uruguay?’, in El país de la cola de paja, 8th ed. (Montevideo: Arca, 1970), 191–94 (p. 192). It was this edition, containing additional essays written after 1964, that was banned by the military following the 1973 coup. 17What Nils Castro says of the second book applies to both volumes: they are written by a ‘participante’ not a ‘comentarista de la participación’. See his ‘Benedetti: la moral de los hechos aclara su palabra’, Casa de las Américas, 89 (1975), 78–96 (p. 90). 18 Inventario, 5th ed. (Buenos Aires: Alfa, 1974), 192. 19 Cuaderno cubano, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires: Schapire, 1974), 167. 20The page-references to Benedetti's characterizations of these and other figures mentioned in the following paragraphs are not exhaustive but do give an indication of their frequency and ubiquitousness throughout Crónicas and Terremoto. 21See the three essays on the president in El país de la cola de paja (1970 edition), 166–82, which anticipate the tone and some of the vocabulary of the references to Pacheco in the later books. 22This is not the extraterritoriality praised by some postmodernist thinkers, of course, but rather the sense of being out of touch with and unsuited to his surroundings despite being of them. 23As mentioned earlier, Bordaberry was the Partido Colorado's fall-back presidential candidate should the constitutional amendment permitting Pacheco a second term not pass, which it did not. Given that it appears in an article dated February 1972, the quip may also refer to the unproven allegations of electoral fraud. 24Earlier on (Crónicas, 71), Benedetti refers to ‘la confianza del pueblo en el pueblo’ as a ‘forma actualizada, materialista y militante, de la vieja enseña bíblica del amor al prójimo’. By tracing the use of the word 'prójimo' through his complete works, it would be possible to show in detail how Benedetti's ideal ‘pueblo’ is a community of ‘prójimos’ bound together through solidarity by an almost New Testament sense of love. He was to use this concept in 1976 to refer to the political organization which he helped to found and lead: ‘Cuando mi prójimo y yo participamos en las luchas políticas de 1971–1973’ (Roberto Fernández Retamar, ‘Conversación con Mario Benedetti’, Cambio, 2:5 [1976], 23–30 [p. 30]). Although he occasionally uses the word, the idea of the ‘masses’ is quite alien to Benedetti's notion of the people as a communion between individuals who choose to be together. 25Thus, Seregni's view of the rank and file committees: ‘El comité de base debe ser hogar de la gran familia frenteamplista’, taken from a speech given just one week before the dissolution of parliament in June 1973 (Líber Seregni, El proceso previo al golpe de estado [1972–1973] [Montevideo: Taurus, 2005], 294). 26Benedetti's use of quotations and references is constant throughout both books of essays. While some (for example, the references to Lenin in Terremoto, 126 and 128) seem to be the product of the reading of particular works, the vast majority, drawn from just about every conceivable period of human history, suggest that the entire range of the best that has ever been thought and said anywhere at any time is on ‘our’ side in the current struggle. 27For a sample of many strategic references to Artigas, see Crónicas, 149, 160, 222 and Terremoto, 59, 66, 247. 28The avalanche of violence symbolized by, but not restricted to, the practice of torture is the ‘earthquake’ referred to in the title Terremoto (see Terremoto, 89–90, 95–103). 29The third article of this decree, which heralded the dictatorship by dissolving parliament and permitting the army and police to take any necessary measures to maintain essential public services, also prohibited publication, in any form, of material which might imply that the executive was using dictatorial methods, or which might disturb public order (see Martha Machado Ferrer and Carlos Fagúndez Ramos, Los años duros [Montevideo: Monte Sexto, 1987], 186). This page reproduces the cover of Marcha, No. 1649 (30 June 1973) which reprinted the first four articles of the decree under the splendidly ironic banner headline: ‘No es dictadura’, which strictly observes the letter of the decree but blatantly defies its spirit. 30Alfaro, Mario Benedetti, 169–70. 31For a fully documented account of the oscillations in Orwell's reception by his readers, see John Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation: The Making and Claiming of ‘St. George’ Orwell (New York: Oxford U. P., 1989). 32‘Crónica y moralidades’, El Popular, 7 July 1972, n. p. 33Mario Benedetti, Escritos políticos (1971–1973) (Montevideo: Arca, 1985), 5. The most significant omission is of all the speeches Benedetti gave on behalf of the Movimiento 26 de Marzo, thus erasing all trace of those texts possibly compromised by the need to express views not wholly his own. Contrastingly, their inclusion in the original volumes emphasizes Benedetti's temporary and tactical willingness to merge his views with those of a like-minded collective. Their later withdrawal confirms the sense of being cramped and intruded upon by militancy in a group, which Benedetti admitted after his return from exile in 1985. See Alfaro, Mario Benedetti, 129–33, and Andrew Graham-Yooll, After the Despots: Latin American Views and Interviews (London: Bloomsbury, 1991), 31–32. 34In ‘E. M. Forster en busca de algo’ (1955), Benedetti called Forster's narrative technique ‘la objetividad de un testigo implicado’, contrasting it with Tolstoy's in allowing Forster to associate himself with the general tenor of the characters’ world: see Mario Benedetti, Sobre artes y oficios (Montevideo: Alfa, 1968), 115–17. He had more recently put the term to sarcastic ends in the opening sentence of ‘Situación del escritor en América Latina’ (1967): ‘No descarto que algún testigo, no demasiado implicado en el instante decisivo que vive América Latina, sea capaz de pronunciarse con estricta objetividad sobre la situación del escritor en esta precisa zona del mundo’ (see Mario Benedetti, Letras del continente mestizo, 3rd ed. [Montevideo: Arca, 1974], 13–21 [p. 13]). 35Juan Rial, ‘Makers and Guardians of Fear: Controlled Terror in Uruguay’, in Fear at the Edge: State Terror and Resistance in Latin America, ed. Juan Corradi, Peter Weiss Fagen and Miguel Garretón (Berkeley: Univ of California Press, 1992), 90–103 (p. 90). 36Mario Benedetti, ‘La literatura como catapulta’, in his Sobre artes y oficios, 36–45. It is worth noting that a footnote added to the essay for its publication in book form directs the reader to two later essays in another volume as more representative of what was then a still evolving point of view (45). These are ‘Ideas y actitudes en circulación’ and ‘Situación del escritor en América Latina’ (both 1967), in Benedetti, Letras del continente mestizo, 9–12 and 13–21 respectively. 37Mario Benedetti, ‘Las prioridades del escritor’ (1971), in Cuaderno cubano, 148–67 (p. 157). 38Steve Fuller, The Intellectual: The Positive Power of Negative Thinking (Cambridge: Icon, 2006), 147. 39Enrique Lihn and Germán Marín, ‘Entrevista a Mario Benedetti, montevideano de vocación’, Cormorán, 5 (Jan. 1970), 3–5 (p. 3). 40In the Padilla affair, the problem arose in part precisely because Padilla cultivated (or, at the very least, flirted with) ambiguity, at times and in situations where the Cubans demanded clarity. An extensive selection of docume nts in the case can be found in Libre, 1 (1971). See also Padilla's novel En mi jardín pastan los héroes (Barcelona: Argos Vergara, 1983) and the symptomatically titled memoir La mala memoria (Madrid: Plaza y Janés, 1991). Also revealing are the comments of Padilla's friends, such as Jorge Edwards, Persona non grata, versión completa (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1982). Although unlikely to be the final word on such a thorny subject, there is a full discussion of the issues raised by it in Claudia Gilman, Entre la pluma y el fusil. Debates y dilemas del escritor revolucionario en América Latina (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2003). 41Ángel Rama, ‘Norberto Fuentes: el narrador en la tormenta revolucionaria’, in his Literatura y clase social (México D.F.: Folios, 1983), 231–61 (especially pp. 243–45 and 253–55).