“It is never the issues that summon me to write. It is the places. The material,” he tells him Clarion Marina Yuszuszuk whose latest novel (Natural history, Blatt & Ríos), is set at the beginning of the Natural Sciences of La Plata. As read in the first pages, it is “freely based.” In fact, he invents a character, the daughter of Francisco P. Moreno, the founder of the museum, and tells the story from his point of view.
“My brothers and I had grown between skeletons, embalmed animals, arrow points, remains of vessel King, ”he writes.
He reveals a little more about the genesis of this work: “I went to the museum many times, the first time I was alone, one week day. I was the only person who made the guided tour and then I could talk a lot to the guide, than He told me in detail how this was reviewing human remains of the original peoplesand how little by little, and with great difficulty, some were restored to the communities that claimed them. ”
Winner of Sara Gallardo novel award 2021 by The butfind a link with this novel: “If it looks like the cemetery of the Recoleta is that it is one of those places where you can see, if you pay attention, different layers, which date back to the nineteenth century. That is what drives me crazy. The past, time, the passage of time, the footprints, the remains. I am melancholic”.
In this novel, the writer, also editor of the Independent Seal Rosa Iceberg, builds A plot that dialogues with Argentine history and the representations around indigenous populations silenced and used as an exhibition piece starkly by the toughest science, molded under the eye of the white man. At the same time, everything is narrated with subtlety, without unnecessary underlines and with flashes of the Gothic that usually characterizes its prose.
– How did you investigate about it? How did you work this? Were you interested in somehow sticking to the real events or did not worry so much?
– I was a lot, starting with Moreno’s trips. The most important material for me were Irina Podgorny’s investigations on Ameghino and Máximo Farro over the early years of the museum. Both are Conicet researchers. Academic research is hard drug and, in addition to being full of data. It allows you to reach a fairly global understanding of a period that you could not have otherwise. I was disappointed as Moreno as I read more about him. Then I thought: in the novel this has to appear. Then, the entire writing process is to separate from that, taking flight. In that sense, writing a novel is always a bit to read and forget. If not, there is no way to create a story that has its own logic. The character of Virginia is the first separation gesture, because it is purely fiction.
– It could be thought that the novel inquires about invisible voices (the indigenous people, Virginia Moreno, daughter of Perito Moreno, although it is a fictional invention). Are you interested in addressing these voices from literature?
–Mmm, I would tell you that I don’t think about those terms. I chose to work with characters that have another look on Argentine history, rather as secondary characters, if you want. It is undeniable that Moreno is the hero, the figure, and there is an official story about him as the founder of the museum, an expert in the conflict with Chile, as one of the parents of the nation, and here appears counted from the point of view of a daughter who loves him, who wishes, so to speak (or want everything he represents) but also from the point of view of these indigenous people who, in their own way, say that the whites are thieves, traitors I am very interested in how those voices and a certain truth about their experience in the official stories. For example, of the indigenous people who took captive to the museum there are several (including Moreno) who say that “do not want to work”, which of course from their point of view is a conviction: they are not useful, they are lazy, they carry it in the blood. But what one can read there is a resistance story because they were practically slaves. And it is very impressive that in the same words the voice of the upper class resonates over the poor and immigrants to this day; In fact, I think it is an idea that we listen to every day.
Marina Yuszczuk. Photo: Anita, publishing kindness.–A of your previous novels (The but) It is also narrated from the point of view of a vampire woman. So that they know we came too (Fernanda). Here there is also a female voice that narrates, do you interest in particular women’s narrators?
– I don’t “interest” women, they go through me. It crosses me everything that has to do with female experience, and I don’t think it’s sufficiently narrated to say “well, that’s it, let’s look for a little variety.” In these books the relationship of women with death appears, with procreation (which are two sides of the same currency), motherhood, body, violence, blood. The designer of women appears and also some struggle, perhaps, with men who are always trying to erect in protagonists. This is the logic in which we grew up. Women begin to question it does not do so much, and we are paying it very expensive.
– It also appears the issue of otherness from the point of view of the indigenous, something also approached by Argentine authors such as Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, César Aira, Osvaldo Baigorria, Sylvia Iparraguirre, Sara Gallardo, among others. Did any of these authors, or others influence you?
– It is not so much literature what I had in mind. I work hard with photographs when I am writing such a novel; The photos I describe exist, and I read a lot about how indigenous people were portrayed from the eyes of the white man, how they were posed, what prejudices were reflected in those photos. It is very rare to see a photo of indigenous people who are not completely filtered by a portrait model that was completely alien to them. I would tell you that there is no. I also took some iconic paintings, such as the return of the malon, which I love. There is some of the experience of these indigenous people that is totally inaccessible to us, but that occasionally appears in a flash, a phrase. Like when Inacayal shouts that whites stole their lands. Then, suddenly he appears, his voice, his particular way of speaking Spanish, and everything that is not shown in the portraits they did to him. In the novel I work that more “realistic” type of registration if you want, and I cross it with the representations of literature, yes, but of the 19th century: Echeverría, Mansilla, Moreno himself.
Marina Yuszczuk. Photo: Anita, publishing kindness.– It is also interesting and risky how sexuality appears, especially between the character of Virginia and Lákax, one of the indigenous people living in the museum. How eroticism appears there in a subtle way. How did you work it?
–There is some of the fetishism with the race I felt that I had to take charge when writing about white and indigenous people living in the same space; It is something that is very present in our tradition, all the imagery in relation to the virility and strength of the Indians, which appears without going further in the return of the malon, with those muscular riders with the ridges to the wind and the white woman with the bare chest, surrendered. It is fascination, horror, and exploitation, all at the same time. In my case, I found the key to entering this issue when I read that one of the indigenous people who were captive in the museum, which was Yagán, masturbated a lot. That’s where a character is armed, because you ask yourself questions. He is someone who had lived from here to there, who had never been able to choose anything, but who could do that: masturbate. Would it have to do with pleasure, with scandalizing, with a gesture of rebellion, desecration? Because obviously he didn’t hide too much. I also seem very powerful the data because it disarms a bit that image of the captive, of the victim. To write to the Indians I based on all those little gestures of rebellion that I found.
Marina Yuszczuk Basic
- He was born in Buenos Aires in 1978.
- Public What people do (Blatt & Ríos), Single mother (Mansalva), The polar cold wave (Gog y Magog), Innocence (Iván Rosado, reissued by Blatt & Ríos), The arrangements (Rosa Iceberg), Will anyone be happy? (Blatt & Ríos) and The but (Blatt & Ríos). With the latter he won the Sara Gallardo novel award in 2021.
- In 2020 he published his poetry gathered under the title Single mother and other poems (Blatt & Ríos).
- She is editor of the Iceberg pink seal.
Natural historyby Marina Yuszczuk (Blatt & Ríos).