Valeria Manzano

BETRAYAL, LOYALTY, THE PERONIST

PEOPLE AND THE FORGOTTEN ARCHIVES:
MIGUEL BONASSOS NARRATIVE AND
THE PERONIST LEFTS POLITICAL
CULTURE, 19842003
In 1999 Miguel Bonasso, the journalist and congressman, made a return voyage to
Mexico City, where he had spent his time in exile during the last Argentine military
dictatorship (19761983). He went there in search of things he had left behind when
returning to Argentina in 1988. Among the objects he found, Bonasso recovered a
diary, which, he says, contained a chronicle of his militancy in the political and armed
Left Peronist organization, Montoneros. A close reading of the manuscript, according
to Bonasso, allowed him to recover the personal and untransferable air of that epoch
(2000: 18). Bonasso decided to publish the diary, keeping the avowed rawness of its
contents.
.o..c 1. o .!o1..c (2000) can be thought of as the nal instalment of Bonassos
long narrative, which began in 1984 with the publication of r..o..1c 1. !o o..., to be
followed by to .c..o . 1c1. o.1 o (1990) and i! ...1.. o. c o. (1997). As the
nal instalment, the .o..c reinforces some of the fundamental procedures of the
narrative as a whole: it appeals to personal experience as the guarantee for the truth of
the narrated past; it confuses the gure of the narrator with the empirical author; and it
blurs the frontiers between ction and reality as well as past and present.
Furthermore, the .o..c narrates the same story as the three previous books: Argentina
in the 1970s, from the perspective of the Peronist Left of the 1970s.
Many critics have highlighted Bonassos apparent inability to move beyond a 1970s
perspective, and have interpreted this inability more generally as a symptom of the
difculties the Peronist Left has in both comprehending its own political responsibilities
for the tragic nale of the revolutionary experiences of the 1970s, and of discussing
post-dictatorship issues related to mourning and the memory of state repression.
Moreover, critics have contended that the militant memories that Bonasso nurtures add
little to the production of a thorough critical analysis of the political and cultural
conditions of the 1970s. Focusing on Bonassos i! ...1.. o. c o., for example,
Beatriz Sarlo asserts that the book scarcely contributes to illuminating the 49-day
presidency of Juan Domingo Perons delegate in Argentina, Hector Campora (May
July 1973), which is its explicit purpose. Rather, Sarlo continues, Bonassos book
constitutes a belated memoir. Indeed, she insightfully suggests that the book, both for
the information it contains and the political stance it adopts, could have been written
Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Vol. 16, No. 2 August 2007, pp. 183-199
ISSN 1356-9325/print 1469-9575 online q 2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13569320701450098
in 1973 or 1976, when the narrated events were taking place. From this point of view,
what matters is precisely what i! ...1.. o. c o. sidesteps. Bonasso, according to
Sarlo, cannot overcome the logics of immediacy, which would demand a shift away
from the position of witness-narrator in order to understand that past rather than
romanticize it (Sarlo, 1997, 2005). In a similar fashion, Hugo Vezzetti (2002)
expresses concerns over the construction of a heroic Montoneros past and the almost
ontological impossibility of rethinking the 1970s in Bonassos narrative. Sarlo and
Vezzetti emphasize one of the key purposes that underlie Bonassos narrative: to
construct a militant memory of the 1970s. Equally important, they also identify a
central drawback: his reconstruction of the 1970s, which almost entirely relies on his
own condition as witness, does not expand our historical knowledge of that period.
For the most part, I agree with Sarlo and Vezzettis criticisms. Nonetheless, they
both tend to highlight what Bonasso does not do, instead of looking at what he
effectively does. The main aim of this article is to focus on what Bonassos narrative 1c.
1c: that is, to reconstruct a Left Peronist political culture in the aftermath of
dictatorship. In the last two decades of the twentieth century, there was no room for
the emergence of a politically active Peronist Left. It had been successively
marginalized from the mainstream of the formal Peronist movement and eventually
eradicated from all main political arenas. Bonassos narrative, as it strives to redene
the contours of a we for the Peronist Left in the 1980s and 1990s, provides this
political culture with a re-enactment of a 1970s set of values, rituals and distinctive
symbols. In other words, through his narrative, Bonasso actively contributes to the
(re-)creation of the Peronist Lefts political culture and sensibility which, in addition,
remains strongly tied to memories of the 1970s.
1
The ideas of betrayal and loyalty have acquired a paramount place among the
values of Peronist political culture. Bonassos writings work with this duo, giving them
a particular, allegedly leftist, inection. Additionally, Bonassos books embed loyalty
and betrayal into the historical frame of the revolutionary 1970s, as well as the years
of dictatorship. Bonassos narrative, in fact, revolves entirely around the tropes of
betrayal and loyalty. The imagining of the social and political worlds through this
dichotomy is not, doubtless, exclusive either to Peronist rhetoric or, for that matter, to
Bonassos narrative. However, Bonasso, rst reorganizes the dichotomy, he then links
it to the context of the 1970s and, nally, he translates it into the 1980s and 1990s
political and cultural landscape. Along with the re-enactment of this set of values,
Bonassos writings also emphasize one of the central symbols of the Peronist political
culture: the People.
In analysing Bonassos narrative, and its re-creation of key Peronist Left values and
symbols, it is also important to discuss its narrative voice, as well as its locus of
enunciation. As the empirical author, Bonasso is himself the central organizing voice of
the narrative, and he appeals to his own experience as a direct witness of the narrated
events, as a political militant, and as keeper of a threatened memory. His position
deploys a fundamental device for the framing of a narrative that supposedly denotes a
counter-memory of the 1970s. I will, therefore, rst examine the voice of the narrator
which articulates Bonassos narrative. After focusing on Bonassos reworking of values
and symbols, I will focus on the trope of the secret archives or clandestine rooms,
which reappears throughout the four books. These clandestine archives, full of stories
of the powerful and the People, are the places where popular memory is stored,
BE T RAY AL , L OY AL T Y , T HE P E RONI S T P E OP L E . . . ARCHI V E S 1 8 4
waiting for someone Bonasso to bring them to light and trace a bridge between
pre- and post-dictatorship.
Through his writings, Bonasso has contributed to the construction of a militant
memory of the 1970s. Most importantly, Bonassos narrative links that memory to the
reconstruction of a Peronist Lefts political culture in the post-dictatorship era. To a
great extent, Bonasso was successful in this attempt. His books reached a wide
audience, were discussed in public forums and eventually, during the 1980s and 1990s,
inuenced the topics being discussed and debated in Argentine public culture.
Bonassos narrative provided its readers with powerful stories, values, images and
symbols that reminded them of past experiences in which the political was lived more
intensively. In doing so, Bonasso helped to preserve a cultural space for the Peronist
Left, one which was detached from actual political space. In other words, between
1984 and 2003, Bonassos narrative created a Left Peronist imagined community.
After the social and political crisis of 2001, Bonasso seems to have found a
loophole. Indeed, after writing a fth book recounting the episodes of the popular
rebellion that took place in Argentina during December 2001, Bonasso created his own
political movement inspired by and composed of former Left Peronists. Bonasso
presumably believed that a new era was born for the Peronist Left after 2001, and
especially after 2003, when Nestor Kirchner became president. For Bonasso and his
associates, this new political era would seem to offer an opportunity for the Peronist
Left, one in which it could nally participate in actual politics and eventually inuence
the entire political scene. Since 2003, Bonasso has not written, as if he had exchanged
the pen for a Congressional seat as a representative of the ruling political coalition.
Perhaps this self-removal from the republic of letters is symptomatic of a broader
trend in Argentine cultural and political life, a trend in which a previously dispersed
political culture became vital once more in mainstream politics. Yet, to examine the
characteristics of this political culture and its most precious symbols and values,
I believe it is important to analyse Bonassos narrative as a whole.
Four books, one narrative
Bonasso published four books related to the experiences of the Peronist Left in the
1970s, its destruction under the dictatorship, and its assumed reconstruction from the
1980s onwards. Amongst these, two received a lot of attention from critics r..o..1c
1. !o o... and i! ...1.. o. c o. either because of their relation to the
construction of a militant memory or because of their formal underpinnings and
generic problematic. Although these two books are doubtless central to Bonassos
work, I will argue that his four books should be read as a unied narrative whole. Three
textual devices account for the articulation of Bonassos narrative: the complex relation
established between ction and reality, the thematic linkages, and the omnipresent
overlap between the gures of the narrator and empirical author.
Bonassos writing produces an in-between space in which ction and non-ction
mix, or, more accurately, where the frontiers between the two are blurred. As literary
critics have argued in their analyses of r..o..1c 1. !o o..., Bonasso is a practitioner of
the testimonial or non-ction novel. As practised by Bonasso, the non-ction novel is a
complex genre whose main trait is the production of effects of truth by appealing to the
L AT I N AME RI CAN CUL T URAL S T UDI E S 1 8 5
narration of personal, real experiences that intertwine with ctional non-real, but
probable scenes (Nofal, 2001; Garc a, 2002). The witness and/or protagonist of
the actual events is thereby central to the conguration of the genre, whose roots in
Argentina can be found in Rodolfo Walshs o..o..c oo... but also as critics Nofal
and Garc a suggest in Osvaldo Bayers tc .o1c.. 1. !o tooc.o .o..o and Tomas
Eloy Mart nezs to o.c 1. 1..!..
While placing r..o..1c 1. !o o... or even i! ...1.. o. c o. in the unstable
conventions of the testimonial novel seems to be widely agreed upon, what happens
then with Bonassos other books? In the case of to .c..o . 1c1. o.1 o, which
explicitly demands to be read as ction, the very status of this ction is problematized.
In fact, characters, situations, anecdotes that appear in other, openly non-ctional
books by Bonasso are here codied into ction. Indeed, real experience and
characters are as central to this novel as they are in the previous books.
2
Reversing this
process, .o..c 1. o .!o1..c is labelled as real and, further, the raw materials that
constitute a diary are at its core. Nevertheless, the added information as well as the
inclusion of brief ctional dialogues leads to suspicions about the possible existence of
such a complete and reexive diary.
3
By so stressing the real or the ctional, Bonassos narrative as a whole is
encoded in the same generic patterns. In addition, it is thematically linked through the
..... . of the same collective protagonist, the Peronist Left. In this regard,
Bonassos books reverse the chronological story: while his rst book refers to the
dictatorship and his second incorporates the problematic of the reconstruction of the
Peronist Left after the return to a formal democratic regime in 1983, his third and
fourth focus on the early 1970s. What is more, all provide a broader historical horizon
in order to incorporate the rst Peronist regime (19451955) as well as the epic
deed of so-called Peronist resistance into the narrative.
4
The dense, compact and
detailed narrations thereby centre on the same topics, frequently resorting to the same
images and anecdotes.
Generically and thematically uniform, Bonassos narrative also depends on a
permanent overlap of internal narrator and empirical author. Thus, the voices of two
militants of the Peronist Left structure the books. In r..o..1c 1. !o o..., the central
perspective is provided by Jaime Dri, a survivor of two concentration camps, who recounts
his story to Bonasso. In all the other books, this perspective is provided by Bonasso himself,
either as a member of Hector Camporas staff or as an assumed privileged witness of the
1970s. Moreover, even though Dri transfers his experience to Bonasso, the latter
ultimately becomes a parallel and competing voice, interrupting Dris account several
times, introducing his I in order to frame the story from his own perspective.
For the most part, Bonassos own voice constitutes the centre of his narrative,
either as its organizing principle or as its framing consciousness. Hence, empirical
author and internal narrator are almost indistinguishable. Even though it is tempting to
follow the line of the autobiographical endeavour, I consider it more productive to look
at the way in which Bonasso presents himself as the bearer of the threatened legacy of
the Peronist Left. As an intellectual, Bonasso may be regarded, in a Gramscian fashion,
as a cultural organizer: the organizer of the remains of a particular political and cultural
space, as well as a creator of common sense that is articulated through powerful tropes,
such as the re-enactment of the loyaltybetrayal dichotomy, on the one hand, and the
symbol of the People, on the other.
BE T RAY AL , L OY AL T Y , T HE P E RONI S T P E OP L E . . . ARCHI V E S 1 8 6
Betrayal-and-loyalty; or, who are friends and who are
enemies now?
Within the Peronist framework, the dichotomy opposing betrayal and loyalty acquired
a paramount role. It served to dene the lines of belonging within an otherwise labile
political movement. Always exible, the frontiers between the loyalist and the traitor
were symbolically traced by evoking a referential centre: Juan Domingo Peron.
Something like what Laclau has referred to as empty signiers, the terms loyalty,
betrayal and Peron were lled with different political connotations.
5
When Peron
was alive, and even amidst increasing competing contestations, he could still dene the
frontiers between loyalty and betrayal (or, to recover their 1970s lexicographic
embodiment, between inltrators and true Peronists).
Nonetheless, what happens when that core is not acknowledged as such or, worse,
when it disappears and only leaves an unorganized void? Is it then still possible to dene
who the loyalists and who the traitors are? Is it possible to establish the limits of inclusion
and exclusion in Peronism? In 1997, Bonasso author, narrator, Peronist militant
provides an answer to these questions and, by omission, also refers to his own project:
In 1973, the Myth [Peron] had to descend to his embodiment as a man . . . . The
end of the myth was the prelude of an even graver phenomenon: the liquidation of
the historical Peronist identity . . . . We knew nothing of this in those days and we
couldnt predict anything: the revolution was possible and necessary and Peron
was not only the individual who was dying but also all of us. (1997: 591)
It is this end of the historical Peronist identity that entails the inability to dene the
frontiers between the loyalist and the traitor. Bonasso, however, draws on a key device to
overcome the problem in the 1970s. Indeed, his we which incorporates the Peronist
Left, basically the Montoneros is endowed with the traits of Peron himself. At least in
part, this device informs Bonassos project and central concerns in his rst two books:
r..o..1c 1. !o o... and to .c..o . 1c1. o.1 o. Both books revolve around the trope of
betrayal, not of a xed center Peron or Peronism but of the broader we. There are,
doubtless, new dimensions to this betrayal, in so far as it is located and fostered within
entirely new conditions: state terrorism and, particularly, the experience of the
concentration camps. I suggest, however, that the centrality that the trope acquires within
Bonassos narrative is an attempt to forge a new foundation of this lost Peronist identity,
not only after Perons death, but most importantly in the aftermath of dictatorship.
In r..o..1c 1. !o o..., betrayal moves and organizes the internal narration, giving it
meaning. Jaime Dri, the central witness and informer, personally witnesses howsome of
his ex-fellow militants collaborate with the military in the concentration camps.
In particular, Dri seems to understand that there is a parallel between not talking, not
informing even under torture and maintaining his personal dignity and identity:
[H]e remembered again all those who had led him into this and was terried to imagine
what they would think if he became a traitor. All those years would be void, blank pages
that never existed. Terror of this void, of a denite loss of identity, of past and future,
allowed him to be installed into the present (Bonasso, 1984: 85). Dri, therefore, as
both a character and real person, strove and managed to hold on to those ties with a/the
L AT I N AME RI CAN CUL T URAL S T UDI E S 1 8 7
we that were also his past o1 future, even if this meant he had to conceal some of his
strongest beliefs.
Deception constitutes, along with betrayal and loyalty, another core trope.
Deception fuels one of the central stories in r..o..1c 1. !o o..., which is the one about
Tucho Valenzuela and his successful attempt to trick the military. Certainly, through
deception, Valenzuela was able to save the Montoneros highest committee, which
after the imposition of the military rule went into exile in Mexico.
6
r..o..1c 1. !o o...
underscores this case precisely because of its political success. Deception was the
frontier that separated betrayal from integrity and loyalty to the we, and Valenzuela
did not cross it. Nevertheless, while the book reinforces the emergence of these non-
traitors, new heroes fostered in the concentration camps, it is also permeated by an
almost morbid attitude with regard to those who did betray, to those who crossed the
frontiers of deception. In this vein, it is again through a supposed internal monologue of
Dri that the terms and metaphors of betrayal are most clearly formulated:
Betrayal is similar to seduction. To the image of the seduced woman. To the one
that gives a kiss, then another, and then nishes by opening her legs [abriendose de
gambas]. One has to hate them [the military]. They always hide something. They
want us to give something vital. And when it happens, one nishes enjoying within
abjection. Happy, yes, happy of having fallen, in the end, to the lowest. Of never
having a return. To deceive . . . has its risks. (Bonasso, 1984: 134)
The sexual connotations in the identication of the traitor with the seduced woman are
obvious: not only does the traitor lose his personal dignity but also, in doing so, he
loses his virility.
7
Indeed, he loses one of the paramount attributes guaranteed by
Peronism (and Peron) to all members of its movement, to the People as a whole: the
traitor ceases to be a macho in so far as he gives names, places, information.
8
He cannot resist or tolerate pressure. Thus the narration recovers, even though tacitly,
the trope of the fall of the decent woman, which has been so central to the tango and
melodramatic imagination.
9
This second, sexualized fall duplicates the rst one
having fallen into the hands of the military and completes it by adding another
moral element. The traitors de-masculinization is therefore not related to the
extreme, special circumstances of being in a concentration camp; it is rather connected
to a personal decision which, without being voluntary, is nevertheless still a decision.
To become a seduced woman or, in other words, a prostitute, is the traitors nal
fate. Perhaps this helps explain the attitude with regard to the cases of actual women
who engaged in sexual relationships with their repressors. r..o..1c 1. !o o...
introduces two of these cases: one in which the woman, Lucy, actively consents to the
terms of a new relationship, and another in which the woman, Pelusa, does not surpass
the frontiers of deception.
10
The tension between betrayal and deception, as expressed
in the framework of the feminine fall, is also what fuels to .c..o . 1c1. o.1 os
central anecdote. The novel revolves around the search for the truth about the nal
days of ctional Susana, the disappeared wife of the also ctional Sergio (Bonassos
o!.. .c). Sergio, coming back from his Mexican exile to late 1980s Buenos Aires,
mobilizes a network of old Peronist Left militants to unravel a question: did Susana
become a traitor whilst imprisoned in a concentration camp?
BE T RAY AL , L OY AL T Y , T HE P E RONI S T P E OP L E . . . ARCHI V E S 1 8 8
It was difcult for him [Sergio] to go out from the underworld in which he had
fallen. He had to ascend from the subterranean rivers of guilt for being alive . . .
guilt for not being able to celebrate Susanas total life, for following and claiming
from her, after her death, an unbroken loyalty, an untiring strength, the same ideal
and superhuman behavior that he had claimed fromher in life. (Bonasso, 1990: 100)
A demand for total loyalty is what is at stake here. The guilt produced by the demand
for superhuman behavior is not compensated, in the novel, by a balanced resolution
of the dilemma. Indeed, after conducting the search, Sergio and his militant friends
discover what they supposed all along: Susana was not a traitor, and she had preserved
her integrity until the last. Sergio and his fellows reinstate the order of things: because
Susana, having fallen into the hands of the military, did not fall again, she takes her
place amongst the heroes. She deceived, but did not betray. She was seduced, but she
did not cross the abyss.
In Bonassos narrative, the experience of the concentration camps constitutes the
highest, most dramatic test for reassessing the terms of loyalty. Those who pass the test
Dri, Tucho Valenzuela, the ctional Susana, and the thousands of disappeared
automatically deserve a place in the pantheon of heroes that Bonasso builds up in his
narrative. In contrast to previous ones, these new heroes do not have to act but, rather,
not act, not speak, not give anything away unless they can master the techniques of
deception and so avoid the risks. Martyrdom and sacrice thereby constitute the
extreme values that an also extreme experience imposes on those who are loyal.
The insistence on the trope of loyalty and betrayal points not only towards the
construction of a pantheon of heroes but also towards the possibility of dening the we
that is the Peronist Left. While the dictatorship produced newheroes, it also provoked the
bitterness of knowing that the we constructed in the early 1970s was denitely broken.
Bonassos rst books assume the political exercise of purifying the we, of patiently
identifying and denouncing those traitors who do not belong any more, and who are
decisively placed within the enemy camp. In this regard, r..o..1c 1. !o o... is particularly
detailed. Stressing the limits of the testimonial, the book strives to provide its readers with
a list, as complete as is possible, of all those who actively collaborated with the military in
two concentration camps, the Escuela de Mecanica de la Armada, in Buenos Aires, and the
Quinta de Funes, in Rosario (1984: 299301). These collaborators, assuming the last link
in the chain of betrayal, are named and condemned.
Yet the gure of the traitor also involves all those who, without having been
imprisoned and, therefore, without having actively collaborated with the forces of
repression, nevertheless voluntarily neglected the principles and the motivation behind
their past militant experiences. In Bonassos narrative these are conceived as renegades
rather than traitors, but the moral condemnation still sticks. Among the gures of the
renegade, the Buenos Aires middle class is probably the one that receives the most
attention as well as the harshest criticisms:
And many of those stupid people that, ten years ago, cried liberation, now cry
democracy, because in between there was the defeat of the popular camp, which
is not their defeat. Because, listen well: all that the radicalized middle class wanted
was to be on the crest of the wave, and now it is the same. They change their
L AT I N AME RI CAN CUL T URAL S T UDI E S 1 8 9
song, but not their position: their position is the same. They only want to be ..
(Bonasso, 1990: 60)
The Buenos Aires middle class, which in the mid-1980s championed the democratic
cause, is also equated with the seduced woman who falls, this time, into fashionable
political trends. In Bonassos narrative, the Buenos Aires middle class was never part
of the popular revolutionary project, because only a few could effectively and
authentically share the feelings of the Peronist people, whom they ultimately
betrayed.
Bonassos 1980s narrative constitutes an effort to re-enact a we by using the
old framework of betrayal and loyalty, by way now, not of Peron and the movement,
but tautologically enough the we itself. The 1980s we is conscious of its
political weakness and marginality in the political realm. Self-assumed weaknesses and
marginality, nonetheless, do not seem to prevent the new we, the new Peronist Left,
from becoming the locus through which the production of a memory of the 1970s
might irradiate. Indeed, the 1980s we, in Bonassos narrative, had lost its capacity to
mobilize politically. Nevertheless, in a context in which nothing but values and symbols
could be produced, it had achieved an even stronger presence as a political culture.
Among these symbols, Bonassos narrative also constructs a re-enactment of the
perennial Peronist People and its archives.
Variations on the Peronist People and their forgotten
archives
Bonassos narrative constructs a restricted, contemporary we, composed of all those
who did not betray, including the absent presence of the disappeared. In addition, this
new we continues to be engaged with the People, a mythological gure in Bonassos
account. As Silvia Sigal and Eliseo Veron have suggested, the 1970s Peronist Left
imagined Argentine history on the basis of the events of 17 October, on the one hand,
and September 1955, on the other. This interpretation reinforced the sense of an
immobile history that involved a permanent .o!. between the People and
imperialism and its local allies (Sigal and Veron, 1986: 1857).
11
To a large extent,
Bonasso draws on this imagery of the People, but re-enacts it by not entirely subsuming
the representation into a heroic framework. Rather, in what constitutes perhaps one of
the most original and least explored avenues of Bonassos writings, his guration
of the People revolves around how Peronism was lived and processed in both political
o1 cultural terms.
Bonasso shifts the focus away from the 1970s Peronist Lefts versions of the
Peronist People. This shift entails an attempt to build up a more nuanced understanding
of the meanings of Peronism. In addition, it also implies a new composition of the
imagery of the People, which is less doctrinal and theoretical and more xed on
powerful images that refer to the material and cultural world that was supposedly
created during the rst Peronist government, the Golden Age. One of the best
representations of the rst Peronist government (and its impact on the People) using
the new interpretive code is given in the description of a ctional character
remembering:
BE T RAY AL , L OY AL T Y , T HE P E RONI S T P E OP L E . . . ARCHI V E S 1 9 0
The workers, as my father said, that now, with the Leader, we were all
Mr. Workers and that the patrons (bosses?) had to respect us. You could hear
the noise of the factories, working o o! [fully] and you could smell the builders
oo1.c [barbecue] at noon and your mother could buy the ..,.1.. [refrigerator] and
she also could buy the .. [Singer sewing machine] . . . . This was a limited,
simple world; .o.. if you want . . . . This world lasted just a short time, of course.
Because after Evitas death, things began to change. Then, the pre-modern of that
time, the gringo petrol men, the Congreso de la Productividad, and the Leaders
incitements to nish with the squandering and to begin to work, they all came.
But, dont you see? I am already being nostalgic. (Bonasso, 1990: 67)
12
Rich in powerful images, this version of the Peronist People in the Golden Age
encompasses two clusters of issues that inform and historically date the statement.
On the one hand, it addresses the classical tropes of dignity and welfare that the
workers, the core of the Peronist People, acquired from the Leader. The metaphor of
well-being embodied in objects and feelings is the central marker. At the same time,
neither in this statement nor throughout Bonassos narrative does the Peronist regime
constitute a site for thinking about the politicization of the People. To a certain extent,
then, the imagery is closer to a conception of a conservative People than to a rebellious
one. In addition, while the People have lost, in this account, part of their rebellious
trait, the enemy of the People gain a new ally: Peron himself, whose incitements to
work now assist the gringos.
On the other hand, the narrator also characterizes himself as nostalgic.
Certainly, the tone of the evocation is highly nostalgic, pointing both to the loss of a
Golden Age which lasted just a short time and to a way of understanding that
past. With regard to the latter, it consists of the use of reied images, which
metonymically refer to a mythology of the popular in the Peronist 1940s.
13
Nostalgia
for an irremediably lost past, which can only be partially recovered. This kind of
evocation, as well as the conservative trait attributed to the People in Bonassos
narrative, is characteristic of a new Left Peronist constellation. It is bound to the
defeat of the popular camp after the dictatorship, as well as to the aspiration to
explain the defeat by shifting the focus away from the characterization of an always-
heroic People.
The narration seems to suggest that popular conservatism may help to understand
the defeat of the popular camp that is articulated through Peronism, but it is not a
theme that is explored fully by Bonasso. Indeed, the attempt to complicate the
imagination of the Peronist People is counterbalanced, in Bonassos narrative, by the
incorporation and interpretation of its heroic deeds. In this sense, the landmarks of
Peronist history constitute critical momentums in which popular heroism irrupted into
the narrative. Thus, the workers with stones in 1955, the bombs and strikes during
the rst resistance, and the warmth and carnivalesque welcomes of Peron in 1972 and
1973 are all markers for considering the heroic saga of the Peronist People that Bonasso
reconstructs.
The Peronist People, a blend of conservatism and heroism, is embodied by
particular gures. In Bonassos universe, one of these is Dardo Cabo, son of a leader of
the rst resistance, and himself a leader of the Montoneros in the early 1970s. Dardo
Cabo, !o..o., drinker of red wine, serves as the model Peronist militant of the
L AT I N AME RI CAN CUL T URAL S T UDI E S 1 9 1
1960s and 1970s (Bonasso, 1997: 299). Through Cabo, Bonasso traces the arcq that he
imagines as the most desirable even if not the most common for the making of an
authentic popular militancy and project for those years. Further, Bonasso and Cabos
friendship, as rehearsed a number of times, suggests the possibilities opened up in the
1970s for an alliance between a well-intentioned, radicalized middle-class o from
Buenos Aires and a Peronist, working-class son:
Our personal and political friendship was really intense, because it was fed by a ..o!
interchange: he helped me to nationalize and Peronize my vision of history.
I was responsible for his ideological radicalization. (Bonasso, 2000: 27)
The division of labour within that friendship condenses what was most promising of the
revolutionary 1960s and 1970s. According to Bonasso, the Peronist feeling and tradition
paradigmatically embodied in Dardo Cabo might guarantee real interchange with an
ideologically radicalized middle class and, thereby, the construction of a wider popular
alliance. Yet that friendship was unique: the inclusion of the termreal reinforces the sense
of failure of such a relationship on a more general level. The emphasis on that friendship
throughout Bonassos narrative points to the fact that not all of the popular camp was
willing to abandon its conservative stance and even less of the radicalized middle class
sought an authentic approach to the Peronist People.
Hence, the narration of this friendship evokes a political and cultural project that
o c, or, at least, could not be completed in all its possibilities. These kinds of
projects are, nonetheless, the ones that Bonasso seeks to recover from the secret
archives. Bonassos narrative largely focuses on the possibilities of constructing a
memory of past resistances. Throughout his narrative there is an insistent proliferation
of the imagery of secret archives, closed rooms and hidden voices: reservoirs of a past
that are waiting for somebody to rescue them.
r..o..1c 1. !o o... begins the search for hidden voices. Dris testimony
concerning the experience of the dictatorships concentration camps, in this case,
alternates with a series of ve chapters called Lejan as. Interrupting the uidity of the
narrative, these chapters evoke, also from Dris perspective, the story of his militant
formation from September 1955, when his father was an eyewitness to the bombings of
Plaza de Mayo, to his increasing involvement in the Peronist Left. It is noteworthy that
Bonasso basically represents Dri, a middle-class young man whose political formation
took place in the province of Chaco, during his rank-and-le experience. Bonasso
removes Dri from Buenos Aires and the modernist 1960s as well as from the
1970s Montoneros leadership, to which Dri ultimately belonged.
Narrating past resistances through personal voices and perspectives seems to be at the
core of Bonassos project of the testimonial novel. Indeed, to .c..o . 1c1. o.1 o echoes
the procedure of Dris voice. In a similar fashion, the character of Lomuto, who left
cassettes for the researcher Sergio, appears as Dris alter ego. Even though Lomuto grows
up in a poor neighbourhood of Buenos Aires and was the son of a working-class family, he
serves as a counterpoint to another ex-Montonero who betrayed in the end. His voice,
materialized in the ctional cassettes, also follows a path of increasing involvement with the
Peronist Left and recovers forms of revolutionary pedagogy associated with the 1960s
and 1970s. Bonassos second testimonial novel incorporates, nonetheless, the key gure
BE T RAY AL , L OY AL T Y , T HE P E RONI S T P E OP L E . . . ARCHI V E S 1 9 2
of the organized, secret archive. Almost a cipher in the novel, the suicidal Bordenave is the
keeper of a:
. . . homemade archive, based on pure dusty les, because he did not have money
to buy a personal computer . . . . But there it was, as he often said, the entire
country . .!co [completely naked] . . . . A complete sector of that depressing
archive collects unfullled electoral promises, as well as old speeches of prominent
characters, which openly contradict their current discourse. In the same area,
[Bordenave] nurtures his obsession for revolutionaries that have crossed to the
other side, constituting what he labels the renegades gallery. A third section
keeps enough evidence about ties that politicians, who today are proud of their
democratic condition, have had to military coup detats. The fourth and last
section is devoted to journalists who were promoters of the dictatorship and then
became champions of democracy. (Bonasso, 1990: 88 and 142)
An archive of the People and its resistance is not complete without an archive of
both the powerful and the treacherous. The memory of the Peoples politics is
impossible without the archive of the anti-People, because they are both terms of the
central contradiction. Bordenaves archive, homemade and depressing, metaphori-
cally points to the reinscription of memory and history by a son of the People. To a
degree, Bordenaves archive works, in the narration, as a counterpoint to the recovery
of the hidden voices of the rank-and-le militants, the Peoples sons.
Doubtless, hidden voices and depressing archives need to be rescued and opened.
In order to open these archives and register their voices, the gure of Bonasso himself is
enlisted. Bonasso interrupts the last episode of Lejan as in r..o..1c 1. !o o... by evoking
the iconographic remembrances of his own experiences in 1973. As Sergio, he becomes the
demiurge of a re-created, smaller community of non-renegades in to .c..o 1c1. o.1 o.
Here, he metaphorically writes both the history of a renegade and the history of the loyal
Susana. As a witness of Camporas government in i! ...1.. o. c o., he opens the
hidden archives of Peronism and unravels the unconditional loyalty of the 49-day
president both to Peron and to the Peronist People. Finally, he legitimizes his own voice by
recounting how he gave himself to the People in .o..c 1. o .!o1..c.
The core of Bonassos project of rescuing hidden voices and secret archives in the
1980s and 1990s is to locate the Peronist People, its best sons, and its main traitors
and enemies. In so doing, Bonassos narrative attempts to reconstruct an
intergenerational bridge, to secure the transmission of a militant memory which
otherwise would be lost or diminished by the discourse of the renegades. Bonassos
militant memory, whose basic premise is not to discuss the politics of the 1970s
Peronist Left directly, is nonetheless a memory of defeat, and it is loaded with
bitterness. This memory is an attempt to provide a re-created political culture with its
values, symbols and traditions.
If not politics, at least culture
With the electoral defeat of Peronism in 1983, the demobilization that followed,
and the ensuing spread of ex-militants throughout the various political alternatives
L AT I N AME RI CAN CUL T URAL S T UDI E S 1 9 3
Peronist or not no room remained for the reconstruction of the Peronist Left in the
1980s. Moreover, the period of Carlos Menems governments (19891999) eroded
the very existence of a Leftist alternative within the formal Peronist Movement and
displaced its remains to other formations, such as the Frente Grande or, later, the
FREPASO. In this arid, unfriendly landscape, Bonassos narrative strove to re-create, if
not a politics, at least a memory and a culture for the Peronist Left.
Bonassos imagining of a Peronist Lefts political culture mainly, a re-enactment
of values, symbols and traditions departs from the acknowledgment of the smaller
we. The political marginality of the new we is duplicated, in his project, by the self-
assumed marginality of the central elements of its political culture amidst an envisioned
postmodernized a` la Argentine cultural and political environment. Hence,
drawing on Raymond Williamss terms, I would like to suggest that Bonassos narrative
embodies an attempt to both re-enact and .c1o.. residual elements. In other words:
Bonassos narrative articulates a Peronist Lefts political culture by activating, in the
1980s and 1990s, central images and tropes encoded in a 1970s tone (Williams, 1977:
122). As in other products of the same cultural formation, such as Fernando Solanass
1oc (1985) or even :o. (1987), Bonassos writing constructs a militant memory and,
in so doing, congures a residuality.
As Williams suggests, a residual cultural element is generally incorporated by and
into the effective dominant culture (1977: 123). But the incorporation of Bonassos
narrative, and its attempt to articulate a Peronist Left political culture, into the
dominant culture is difcult to grasp. There are some clues, however, such as the
politics of the publication industry. While Bonasso praises the self-marginality, self-
residuality of his project, what is probably the most important publishing house in
Argentina publishes his books. This fact speaks of the permeability of the market as well
as the desire to inscribe the margins into the heart of public culture in 1990s
Argentina.
In so far as the market in this case, accessed via the publisher does not
pursue charitable endeavours, the question that remains is: into which market does
Bonassos narrative t? Who, to put it another way, reads Bonasso? The question of
readership and the meanings it generates is a difcult one to track. Nevertheless, the
narrative itself its style, its main tropes provides us with important clues. Even
though the construction of an intergenerational bridge is a key authorial intention
as the guration of the generational reserve in to .c..o . 1c1. o.1 o clearly
illustrates Bonasso speaks to his generational peers. It is a generation dened not only
by age but also, and fundamentally, by politics. This generation is able to decode shared
signs and does not need further explanations of contexts, situations or names.
To that political generation, dispersed throughout the political eld, Bonasso offers
powerful images of a shared past without obliging it to rethink collective
responsibilities. In this sense, the reading of Bonassos testimonial novels, as Beatriz
Sarlo argues, probably entails a tranquillizing effect, a nostalgic one. Further, Bonassos
narrative also implies a sort of compensation: the lost possibilities of political
mobilization become transformed into a dense iconic framework of a past as well as
allegedly present political culture that is shared. The lasting attraction that Bonassos
narrative holds in this particular market does not necessarily have to do with the
readability of his books alone which, although central for transmission purposes, is
not as crucial as literary critic Romina Garc a concludes. It also has to do with the
BE T RAY AL , L OY AL T Y , T HE P E RONI S T P E OP L E . . . ARCHI V E S 1 9 4
articulation of meaningful tropes, such as the re-enactment of loyalty and betrayal and
the insistent imagery of the secret archive.
Bonassos ability to articulate these tropes appeals to strong, emotive
identications. Perhaps readers also sought to nd, at least in narrations, an intensity
of the political that had seemed to be denitively lost in the 1980s and 1990s: a
symbolic recovery of some postcards of intensity, of years in which the People went to
the streets and gave their best sons. Bonasso re-enacts, after the defeat of the popular
camp, central values, myths and traditions. In sum, and as he promises in .o..c 1. o
.!o1..c, he offers his generational peers the personal and not transferable air of an
epoch an epoch, the 1970s, which acted as the foundational moment for a political
culture, the Peronist Left, that Bonasso insistently sought to re-create and preserve in
an Argentine 1... .!. that did not offer possibilities other than those of imagining.
Politics and culture? 2001 and beyond
As I have argued throughout these pages, Bonassos narrative strove to reconstruct a
political culture for the Peronist Left in a post-dictatorship context. This endeavour of
the 1980s and 1990s implied, fundamentally, a dense symbolic work that created a
memory of the militant and dictatorial 1970s. The political premises for Bonassos
culturally inected re-creation were, precisely, the lack of room for an actual,
politically activated, Peronist Left in the last decades of the twentieth century.
Nonetheless, the political and social crisis of 2001 seemed to open a new cycle of
politics in the streets in Argentina, a cycle in which the combination of neoliberalism
and professionalized politics would disappear from the Argentine scene. Or, at least,
these were the beliefs that Bonasso promoted in his i! o!o..c , !o .o!!., a chronicle of
the events that took place on 19 and 20 December 2001.
14
As with Bonassos previous books, i! o!o..c , !o .o!!. is framed in the generic codes
of the testimonial novel. Yet, this time the narrators are plural and do not overlap with
the empirical author. Indeed, the stories of Martin Galli, a 26-year-old student who
barely escaped death on 20 December when a police bullet hit him in the head, and el
Toba, an activist and former leftist militant who saved Gallis life, frame the book.
In addition, the book incorporates many other voices from !o .o!!. over these two
turbulent days. to .o!!., nevertheless, was the site not only of spontaneous popular
rebellion but also of the systematic police repression that ended with 34 dead, ve of
them near the Plaza de Mayo and .! o!o..c. Thus Bonasso seeks to reconstruct the
conspiracies and stories in .! o!o..c: the fall of former president Fernando de la Rua;
the orders for the repression; the successive compromises among Peronist governors
and congressmen that nally led to Eduardo Duhaldes presidency (January 2001May
2003).
By purportedly constructing and protecting the memory of those days, Bonasso is
again unpacking the secret archives of the powerful and the voices of the people so as
to disentangle conspiracies and resistances. Most fundamentally, Bonasso builds up an
interpretation of December 2001 that links it to the 1970s. Those who repressed and
those who resisted, Bonasso argues, were linked to the 1970s scene. Rodolfo Walshs
assassin was not in the Plaza de Mayo, but his son was there, and Bonasso accuses him of
being involved in the murder of one of the ve killed. The thousands of disappeared
L AT I N AME RI CAN CUL T URAL S T UDI E S 1 9 5
were not in Plaza de Mayo, but their mothers and children were there, to ght what
Bonasso deems secular combat (Bonasso, 2002: 197).
Nonetheless, in the popular rebellion of 19 and 20 December, the Peronist Left
was absent as a visible force. Perhaps because he believed that after December 2001 a
loophole was opened in the Argentine political landscape, Bonasso did not offer his
readers only an interpretation of those events. Rather, he offered himself as the
embodiment of that Peronist Left he strove to (re-)create over the past two decades.
Thus, in 2002, he founded a new political organization, composed mostly of former
Peronist leftists, and named after its Mexican homonym: Partido de la Revolucion
Democratica (PRD, Party of the Democratic Revolution). In the elections of March
2003, the PRD obtained almost nine per cent of the votes in the city of Buenos Aires
and Bonasso became a Congressional representative.
15
In the same elections, Nestor
Kirchner started on his path towards the presidency, formalized in May 2003. Soon
after, the PRD publicly announced that it would support the new president without
reservation.
Since 2003, Bonasso has not written. Since 2003, Bonasso has considered himself
part of the ofcial coalition led by Nestor Kirchner. Does this imply that the Peronist
Left has found, nally, a central political space? To what extent does x...|...c
contain the traits of that Peronist Left that Bonasso wrote about in the 1980s and
1990s? These questions are open, albeit for conservatives like Mariano Grondona the
answers are clear enough: Kirchner, but fundamentally Bonasso in Congress, speaks
about the return of Montoneros, of their methods and strategies.
16
A more nuanced
vision would doubtless be far more cautious with such a characterization.
Yet Bonasso barely writes. Like many others including the Mothers of Plaza de
Mayo, led by Hebe de Bonani Bonasso is condent about the new political cycle
represented by x...|...c Like other cultural and political actors in Argentina today,
Bonassos condence seems to rely primarily on x...|...cs human rights politics,
which has so far been marked by the reopening of trials of the military after the
annulments of the so-called Leyes del Perdon. Perhaps more fundamentally, Bonasso
seems condent about the probability of constructing a new we for the remains of the
Peronist Left. A we, this time, articulated from within an actual political process.
This we probably has read Bonassos books and learnt of a political culture congured
around powerful tropes and images of loyalty, betrayal, the Peronist People and its
secret archives.
Notes
1 For the concept of political culture, see Sirinelli (1997).
2 See Sanchez (1992).
3 Bonasso himself recognizes that, in .o..c 1. o .!o1..c, he added context to certain
characters. However, he did not mention that he included thoughts supposedly
written in the late 1960s, even though the diary did not begin, as Bonasso
acknowledges, until 1970.
4 After the 1955 coup detat, Peronism was formally proscribed from the public arena.
In the second half of the 1950s, trade unionists, rank-and-le workers and some
second-rank militants outside the unions, through different strategies, carried out
BE T RAY AL , L OY AL T Y , T HE P E RONI S T P E OP L E . . . ARCHI V E S 1 9 6
a process of resistance to both political proscription and socioeconomic
reorganization. See James (1988), especially Parts II and III. James points out that
the movement of resistance was almost exhausted by the early 1960s. However, Left
Peronist militants, like Bonasso, used to invoke the term resistance to refer to the
Peronist militancy throughout the years in which Peronism was proscribed (from
1955 to 1973).
5 For an analysis of Peron as an empty signier, particularly during the proscription era,
see Laclau (2002).
6 Tucho Valenzuela led the military to believe that he would help them nd and
imprison the Montoneros highest committee in Mexico. He was sent to Mexico to
follow the militarys plan. Instead, Valenzuela was able to inform the Montoneros
about the plan that the military had developed and therefore save them from
imprisonment and eventually death.
7 Idelber Avelar (1999: 667) briey refers to the centrality of betrayal and, in his
terms, faithfulness in Bonassos r..o..1c 1. !o o..., as well as to the feminization of
the traitor constructed in the novel. However, Avelar focuses on the Christian roots
of the notions of betrayal and faithfulness without taking into consideration the
reformulation of this pair by Peronist discourse.
8 Daniel James, in an interview he conducted with a former worker, asked what
changes Peronism brought to his life, if compared with the 1930s. The workers
answer is short and clear: With Peron we were all machos. See James (1988: 29).
9 In this vein, it is noteworthy that one of the crucial inter-textual references
throughout Bonassos narrative is Roberto Arlt, whose own narrative intertwined the
theme of sexual fall and betrayal. For an analysis of these topics in Arlt, see Masotta
(1999).
10 In an interview, which took place more than 10 years after the publication of r..o..1c
1. !o o..., Bonasso reinforces his interest in unravelling the cases of those women
who effectively consented to having sexual and, more generally speaking, affective
relationships with their repressors. See De Luca and Garc a (1996: 4).
11 The date 17 October 1945, the day on which thousands of people went to Plaza de
Mayo to demand the release of Peron, is often viewed as the mythical day of the
beginning of Peronism, which sealed the bond between Peron and the People.
By contrast, on 16 September 1955, the military overthrew the Peronist government
and Peron went into exile.
12 The reference to the Congreso de la Productividad is not random. In 1954, the
government, the General Confederation of Labor, and the General Confederation of
Economics (which agglomerated the alleged national bourgeoisie) called for a
renewal of the social pact. Among the issues that the renewal had to address was the
raising of the levels of the workers productivity at factories and workshops. For an
analysis of the social and economic problematic in the early 1950s, see Ramos (1972).
For a revision of the socio-political impact of the Congress, see Bitran (1994).
13 At the risk of extrapolating, the vivication of the past through reied images is a trait
that, according to Fredric Jameson (1991: 2935), is central to the postmodern sense
of historicity. Even though I am not suggesting here that Bonassos narrative might be
read through the lens of postmodernism, it is noteworthy that his evocation of the
Golden Age of Peronism is composed by similar kinds of images.
14 Interestingly enough, the other insistent reconstructor of Peronist Left sensibilities in
the 1980s and 1990s, Fernando Solanas, also turned his attention towards the events
L AT I N AME RI CAN CUL T URAL S T UDI E S 1 9 7
of December, and the process that led to them. Indeed, Solanass last movie, M.c..o
1.! oo.c (2003) was released in the Mar del Plata Festival in 2004, where the rst
lady and senator Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was in charge of honouring the
lmmaker with an award.
15 The information can be found at http://www.mininterior.gov.ar/elecciones/
estadistica/e_03_legis.asp
16 Mariano Grondona has been constructing this interpretation since 2003, in his weekly
editorials in to :o..c and his television programme, Hora Clave, both appearing on
Sundays.
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Valeria Manzano is a PhD candidate at the History Department, Indiana University at
Bloomington, and holds a Licenciatura in History, at the University of Buenos Aires. She
has published articles in the Journal of the History of Sexuality and Film & History. She has
taught courses in social history and in modern cultural Latin American history at the
University of Buenos Aires, the Torcuato Di Tella University, and Indiana University.
L AT I N AME RI CAN CUL T URAL S T UDI E S 1 9 9