Estudios de Teoría Literaria (Nov 2020)
Chronicle and memory: socio-environmental struggles and testimony of infamy in Guerras del interior by Joseph Zárate
Abstract
This writing reflects on the links that chronicle and memory have: a possibility of witnessing the time. To demonstrate this argument, the chronicles book Guerras del Interior (2018) by Joseph Zárate, is analyzed. Thus, initially, a conceptual panorama is offered on the capacity to represent the present that non-fiction narrative texts display. Then, in order to characterize it, a retelling of the three most important moments in the cultural field of the Latin American chronicle is developed (modernist writing, narrative journalism of the sixties and seventies, and the production of contemporary chronicles). Finally, a textual and paratextual interpretation of the book is detailed. On the one hand, it is shown how –through the themes, the narrative mode and the worked details– these chronicles narrate the socio-environmental conflicts from the social denunciation. On the other hand, through the epigraphs and the epilogue that the book presents, it is reflected on the ethical position that the author makes explicit in relation to the stories and characters that he relates.
