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Shortened de Estudios Hispánicos, Tomo XLVII, Número 1, Marzo 2013, pp. 151
151-172 (Article)
NANCI BUIZA
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what is at stake here is “not the status of the document, but rather the
use of the document” (emphasis in original). The narrator’s metamor-
phosis allows him to assimilate the affective content of the testimonies
he initially consumes as literary delight. The novel hence suggests that
making historical narratives meaningful calls for a personal encounter
with the past; even if that experience proves to be life-altering, as in the
narrator’s case.
and then concludes that he is equally insane because “sólo alguien fuera
de sus cabales” like him would be willing to travel to a foreign country
to work for an institution he despises—the Catholic Church—and
carry out the risky task of copyediting an official report of massacres
perpetrated by the national military (14). His complaint—“[y]o no estoy
completo de la mente”—is exacerbated when he does not receive his pay
advance and his workload is doubled without further compensation.
The narrator interprets the administration’s irresponsibility as an offense
to his privileged ladino status and claims that he is not “otro de esos
indios acomplejados” with whom the administration is used to working
(39). The narrator’s outrage over his pay reveals that his true motivation
for accepting this job is money. For him, “el cumplimiento de un pago
está por encima de cualquier otro valor,” including the humanitarian
values invested in the project (37). By the end of the novel, however,
the narrator’s self-diagnosed insanity for accepting such a low-paying
job at an institution he despises will prove to be more prophetic than
cynical.
At the peak of his aloofness, the narrator’s only appreciation of
anything produced by the Maya peoples is the stylistic quality of their
testimonies. He believes that their inventive use of language is on a par
with the best literature. For this reason, he keeps a notebook in which
he jots down testimonial fragments, each of which he considers to be
a “joya poética” (32). Incidentally, this violates the rules prohibiting
him from taking or sharing any information outside the office, which
furthermore reflects his insolent behavior. The narrator is mesmerized
by the figurative language and peculiar syntactical constructions of the
testimonies and considers them worthy of admiration. During this first
half of the novel, the narrator seems oblivious to the actual content of
the testimonies: the stories of pain and sorrow of the Mayas. It can be
off-putting to see how he finds only prosodic value in verses such as
“[p]orque para mí el dolor es no enterrarlo yo . . .” when the words “dolor”
and “enterrar” transmit suffering and sadness that go far beyond the sty-
listic qualities of language (32). Instead of reading such verses for their
affective content, the narrator is surprised that indigenous peoples with
little to no formal Western education can produce such complex poetry
that reminds him of the renowned Peruvian poet César Vallejo (32).
Up to this point, the narrator epitomizes the cynicism that
critics generally describe in Castellanos Moya’s work. In his initial
characterological iteration, the narrator seems unethical for his early
Trauma and the Poetics of Affect in Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Insensatez 159
Tres días llorando, llorando que le quería yo ver. Ahí me senté abajo de la
tierra para decir allí está la crucita, ahí está él, ahí está nuestro polvito y lo
vamos a ir a respetar, a dejar una su vela, pero cuando vamos a poner la
vela no hay donde la vela poner . . . Porque para mí el dolor es no enterrarlo
yo. (32)
For Nathalie Besse, the absence of a dead body in the novel functions
as a “doble aniquilamiento” that effaces the identities of the deceased
victims by stripping them of a name, a body, and a place in their soci-
ety. This erasure of the dead denies the surviving families their right to
mourn, thereby entrapping them in perpetual grief.
The metaphor of the “alma en pena” allows the reader to com-
prehend how closely the narrator is identifying with the victims and
thus serves as a way of charting his metamorphosis. His desire to write
a novel about a grieving soul shows that he is beginning to understand
the kernel of the victims’ pain. The catalyst that makes possible the
narrator’s metamorphosis is the poetics of affect that animates the
testimonies he copyedits. He views poetry as a mechanism that
expresses—in densely packed and highly charged language—the
victims’ shattered mental state and serves as a therapeutic channel
through which to confront one’s own traumatic past. He sees poetic
verses as “cápsulas concentradas de dolor” whose sonority and evoca-
tive power have the strength to penetrate deep beneath his skin, into
162 Nanci Buiza
of which his initial ladino cultural identity emerged. The image he sees
in the mirror now produces a disidentification with that old identitary
model; he has become “unknown” and “unrecognizable” to himself. He
cannot return to his cynical self after being overcome by the trauma of
the survivors. Consequently, he loses the possibility of reclaiming the
position of the cultural otherness that he had occupied at the beginning
of the novel.
privilege by the king. Although Antigone pays with her life for her defi-
ance, she believes that she has carried out her moral obligation by giv-
ing peace to her brother’s soul. The reference to Antigone instills in the
reader the idea that achieving justice for the dead is the most important
aspect of fulfilling one’s duty and moral obligation to the deceased, even
if that implies the ultimate personal sacrifice. This reference acquires a
deeper meaning for the reader when it becomes clear that one of the
main themes of Insensatez involves the disappearance of the bodies of
the victims of genocide and the survivors’ constant search for them.
Therefore, the reference to Antigone encapsulates the novel’s core argu-
ment, namely, that the inability to recover the bodies of the victims is
what deepens the social wound caused by years of war and genocide.
This bespeaks of Guatemalan society’s inability to heal from its psychic
injury until it listens to, accepts, and works through its own trauma. As
a consequence of positing this new form of bearing witness, Insensatez
shatters the politically exhausted reading of testimonio in order to pick
up the compelling pieces of human suffering that political agendas had
co-opted. Freed from their political coordinates, these pieces reveal an
enduring affective force that the novel ultimately suggests is the only
way through which testimonio’s project of representation may truly
achieve its greatest power.
Emory University
NOTES
* I would like to give special thanks to Dierdra Reber and Arturo Arias for their gener-
ous readings and insightful comments to earlier drafts of this essay.
1
For a detailed discussion on the origin of testimonio and its critical reception, see
Elzbieta Sklodowska.
2
In Nicaragua, the Sandinistas were defeated in democratic elections in 1990, which
in effect gave a political victory to a decade-long US covert effort to overthrow them
via the Contras war. In El Salvador and Guatemala, the exhaustion of war and its
economic cost reached their limits. El Salvador ended its twelve-year civil war with the
signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords in 1992. Four years later, in 1996, Guatemala
also ended its thirty-six-year civil war with the signing of the Firm and Lasting Peace
Agreement. Diplomatic relations and democracy thus became the vehicle to confront
right-wing conservative parties.
170 Nanci Buiza
3
In Guatemala, ladino is the name used to refer to people of mixed European and
indigenous ancestry (in other Latin American countries they are referred to as mestizos).
They constitute the privileged socio-economic ethnic class of Guatemala and stand in
sharp contrast to the Maya indigenous population. This term should not be confused
with the Judeo-Spanish language also called ladino.
4
The fragments of the testimonies reproduced in the novel appear in italics, always
signaling the testimonial voice. For this essay, the italics have been preserved and are
original to the text.
5
Along with the truth and reconciliation report itself and the name of the Guatemalan
military dictator Ríos Montt, the account of the bishop’s murder is the novel’s final key
historical reference. Bishop Juan Gerardi, who oversaw the report Guatemala: Nunca
Más, was murdered on April 26, 1998, two days after the public presentation of the
report. As in the novel, his assassins used a concrete slab to destroy his face; he was
bludgeoned to death in his home in Guatemala City. The significant modification in
the novel is that Castellanos Moya makes the bishop nameless despite the transpar-
ent historical reference. For more details on Bishop Gerardi’s murder, see Francisco
Goldman.
6
In his controversial book Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans,
David Stoll questions certain “factual shortcomings” in Menchú’s account of her life
story and the struggle of her Maya community to overcome poverty, discrimination,
and the genocide carried out by the Guatemalan military (xxiv). Not taking Menchú’s
story at face value, Stoll challenges the conviction that she represents all poor Gua-
temalans and accuses her of presenting a “mythic inflation” of her life story in her
testimonio (232). What I would like to highlight in general terms about the Menchú/
Stoll controversy is that what is at stake is the truthfulness of the testimonial subject’s
story versus his or her poetic freedom to narrate a personal life story that feeds off
a collective experience. For more details about the controversy, see Arias’s book The
Rigoberta Menchú Controversy, which presents a thorough compilation of articles from
both sides of the controversy, including responses by Stoll and Menchú.
WORKS CITED
Arias, Arturo, ed. The Rigoberta Menchú Controversy. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota
P, 2001. Print.
———. Taking Their Word: Literature and the Signs of Central America. Minneapolis:
U of Minnesota P, 2007. Print.
Besse, Nathalie. “Violencia y escritura en Insensatez de Horacio Castellanos Moya.”
Espéculo: Revista de estudios literarios 41 (2009): n. pag. Web. 12 April 2012.
Beverley, John. Testimonio: On the Politics of Truth. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P,
2004. Print.
Trauma and the Poetics of Affect in Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Insensatez 171