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Body Politics: Death, Dismemberment, and Memory in Latin America

2006; Duke University Press; Volume: 86; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-2005-014

1527-1900

Rebecca Earle,

Latin American and Latino Studies

Nationalism has always required heroes, and Latin American nationalism is no exception. By 1826, Peruvian officials were referring to Simón Bolívar as the "hero of our political existence." The presence of these numinous figures is evoked in statues, paintings, and a myriad of other forms that symbolize and bless the nations that honor them. Their physical remains, too, may be appropriated for nationalist ends; in the 1870s, the Argentine government went to considerable effort to repatriate the body of the independence hero José de San Martín. This splendid volume examines the political and cultural importance of the heroic body. Túpac Amaru, Juan Manuel de Rosas, Emiliano Zapata, Getúlio Vargas, Che Guevara — all left physical remains whose meaning (and location) quickly became embroiled in polemic. For example, as Ward Stavig shows in his examination of the executions of the first and second Túpac Amaru, the bodies of both these men and of "the Inca" more generally held radically different meanings for colonial officials and Andean peoples.In his introduction, Lyman Johnson stresses particularly the similarities between commemorations of patriotic and cultural heroes, on the one hand, and of Catholic saints, on the other. Both, he suggests, focus more on emblematic suffering than triumphant victory. Willing sacrifice — even death — gives life to the greater community bathed in the blood of heroes and martyrs. Johnson's compelling and readable account of the supposed excavation of the bones of the Aztec prince Cuauhtémoc (a topic also examined recently in the Journal of Latin American Studies by Paul Gillingham) argues that for certain nationalists, Cuauhtémoc became, effectively, a Mexican Christ. A number of chapters take up this theme, suggesting continuities between Christian commemoration and nationalist adulation. As Jürgen Buchenau notes in his examination of Alvaro Obregón, the severed arm of the revolutionary general "was passed among Obregón's officers, who looked at it as something sacred, as a relic" (p. 184). And, observed Freddy Alborta, the photographer who captured the image of Che's dead body, "I had the impression I was photographing a Christ" (p. 332). The unofficial canonization of Eva Perón similarly lends itself to such an analysis. Indeed, although Johnson emphasizes particularly the importance bodies have to the enterprise of nationalism, the book's attention is by no means confined to the nationalist dimensions of body politics. In her excellent examination of the cult of Eva Perón (and the complementary noncult of Juan Perón's body), Donna Guy considers not only the political significance attached to Eva Perón's remains but also the fascinating similarities between her cult and those of popular "saints" such as La Difunta Correa.Some contributors throw themselves into the theme of body politics with more enthusiasm than others. Christon Archer offers a careful study of the lives and deaths of Miguel Hidalgo, José María Morelos, and Agustín de Iturbide, whose physical remains are not the focus of later symbolic connections to the nation. His chapter ends with a fine discussion of how these men were commemorated and remembered, but not exactly of the importance of their bodies. Jeffrey Shumway's chapter on the repatriation of the body of Juan Manuel de Rosas, on the other hand, focuses explicitly on the importance of Rosas's body to Peronism and of the use of body metaphors to characterize the Argen-tine state. (Recall Carlos Menem's command, "Argentina, rise up and walk!") Samuel Brunch provides a chapter on the strange and multiple stories about the body of Emil-iano Zapata — if it was his body — that circulated in Mexico after Zapata's death—if he did die—while Paul Dossal contributes a thoughtful and focused discussion of the importance of Che Guevara's dead body, both to the Bolivian officials who executed him and to Che's many disciples. Daryle Williams and Barbara Weinstein offer a rather brilliant meditation — written with great brio — on the meaning — or, in a sense, on the un-fixedness, the incompleteness, the lack of meaning — of Getúlio Vargas's death. In this episode, Vargas's body, while important, is by no means the central focus. It is worth noting, moreover, that a further virtue of this volume is that, in addition to assessing the role of the body within nationalist and, more broadly, popular memory, it also offers pithy and readable biographies of the historical figures whose bodies it examines. The careers of Hidalgo, Obregón, and others are concisely summarized in a way that renders this collection particularly suitable for undergraduates.My complaints are few. At times I wished the contributors had provided more information about the illustrations. Images are seldom dated and provenance is not always ascribed clearly. Moreover, for a volume devoted to body politics, the body itself is curiously absent from the index. Onomastic entries figure prominently, but bodies and their attributes do not. I found myself composing an alternative index, with entries such as "hands, severed: Perón, 252 – 54; Che Guevara, 334," or "hearts: eaten during Túpac Amaru Rebellion, 47; separate burial of Anastasio Bustamante's, 93." Dismemberment, too, deserved an entry of its own, I thought. But perhaps this simply means I should get a life. I end with a quote from Jürgen Buchenau, who observes — in an assertion triumphantly vindicated by this volume — that "a severed limb of a leader"—or, we might add, a heart, a hand, or an entire body—"has much to tell us about the culture of leadership in a society" (p. 183).