Beyond Innocence: Mexican Guerrilla Groups, State Terrorism, and Emergent Civil Society in Three Novels by Carlos Montemayor, Élmer Mendoza, and Fritz Glockner
Keywords:
Latin American Literature, Guerrilla Novel, Literature and Politics, Mexican GuerrillaAbstract
Little was known about the Mexican guerrilla movements of the 1970s outside of the country. They were ignored by the international Left, and they were subjected to brutal repression and counterinsurgency warfare within the country. Some of these movements were crushed by repression, whereas formations of others – most famously, the EZLN, the EPR and the ERPI – are still active today. In this context an unusual type of guerrilla literature emerged: novels which were written not by former guerriller@s themselves in the tradition of testimonio, but by writers who aligned themselves with autonomous civil society. They explore the possibility of solidarity between those who took up arms, and those who opted for different types of struggle under commitments that were potentially compatible with those of the guerrilla. In this article I compare three such novels: Carlos Montemayor’s Guerra en el paraíso (1991), Élmer Mendoza’s El amante de Janis Joplin (2001), and Fritz Glockner’s Veinte de Cobre: Memorias de la clandestinidad (2005). All three authors deploy three narrative strategies, which also provide the comparative framework for the analysis presented here: they question the deceitful hegemonic framework through with the subjectivities of the guerrilleros were understood; they denounce secret repression against guerrillas and some sectors of the civilian population; and they expose the paralyzing co-existence of a façade of legality with a state of exception. The possibility of solidarity finds a concrete manifestation in what I here call the move beyond innocence: the refusal to claim innocence, or to accept guilt, on the terms of a terrorist government.
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