The novel 'No place for heroes' (Demasiados heroes) by the Colombian author, Laura Restrepo, resonated more with me since the story is about Argentina, rekindling my nostalgia. Lorenza, a Colombian journalist joins an Argentine resistance group based in Madrid against the dictatorship. She takes an assignment to smuggle passports, microfilms and secret stuff to Buenos Aires. There she falls in love with an Argentine militant Ramon. They start living together but the life is filled with fear and tension under the military regime. Lorenza persuades Ramon to shift to Colombia when they get a baby. She wants Mateo, the son to grow in peace in Colombia. But Ramon gets bored in Bogota and drifts away from Lorenza after some time. He returns to Argentina and takes his son Mateo also with him after lying to Lorenza that he is just taking him out for a weekend outing in Bogota. Lorenza gets even madder when a narco mafia group threatens her and her family for repayment of a large sum of money Ramon had taken from them with a cheque in which Lorenza's signature was forged. Lorenza goes to Argentina to recover the son and finds him in Bariloche happily enjoying with Ramon horse riding and walking around the scenic Bariloche area. Lorenza manages to take Mateo back and escapes to Bogota. Ramon knows Lorenza's plan but lets her get away. When Mateo grows up, he comes back to Argentina with his mother to look for the father, after the end of the dictatorship. He manages to find and reunite with him in Bariloche.
The novel brings out the dark period of the Dirty War in Argentina when thousands of people 'disappeared', exiled, tortured and killed. The Argentine society had a traumatic experience caught between the cruel and sadistic military and the naïve idealistic militants who fought against the dictatorship. Thousands of young people from the middle class believed in their noble cause and plunged into the resistance movement with a romantic revolutionary fervor. Their amateurish acts and provocations were punished with inhuman and terrible suppression by the secret service and the dictatorship.
I have read many Argentine books and novels about the travails of the Argentine society during the dictatorship. Laura Restrepo has given an outsider's perspective. She did not just imagine Argentina. She had actually lived there for four years as a member of the underground resistance, married an Argentine and had a son from him in Buenos Aires. The novel seems like a fictionalized autobiography.
Restrepo's narration of the resistance is also authentic reflecting her own political activities in Argentina, Colombia and Spain as well as her journalistic experience of covering the Colombian guerillas. She had faced dangers because of her political activites in Colombia itself and was forced into exile for six years in Mexico. She was member of the Trotskyist party of Colombia for some time.
Restrepo praises the courage of the mothers who marched in Plaza de Mayo demanding the return of their sons and daughters, daring and defying the watching eyes of the murderers. In her words, this was the beginning of the fall of the dictatorship. Restrepo describes the endless agony of those whose dear ones had ' disappeared'. While death of someone closes the emotional door in some sense, the 'disappearance' keeps the door open with eternal hope, waiting and driving oneself to madness. I remember reading the statement of an An Argentine general who said, 'not alive not dead but simply disappeared'.
Restrepo has depicted the typical Argentine Macho spirit through Ramon's emotional, reckless, moody, mysterious and adventurous character. She gives a vivid account of the good life in Buenos Aires by taking the readers through the lively and elegant cafes, bars and restaurants as well as the discrete but unmissable 'telos' of Buenos Aires.
The best part of the novel is the constant conversations between the mother who narrates the stories of her adventurous life and the adolescent son who questions everything she says in his irreverent way. Lorenza tells him about her revolutionary younger days, her uncertain life in Argentina and her love for Ramon . But he interrupts, challenges and interpretes everything with his sarcastic comments.
The book is a delicate blend of romance, love and revolutionary spirit of the lovable Latin America.
I have earlier read Restrepo's other books: The dark bride (blog review), Leopard in the sun (blog review), and La Isla de Passion blog review and 'The angel of Galileo'.
The real life of Laura Restrepo is also as fascinating as her novels. A glimpse of her life at http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3433900063.html
-an interview in which she herself narrates her life http://bombmagazine.org/article/2457/
-another interview to La Nacion of Argentina when the book was launched in Buenos Aires in 2009 http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1134340-laura-restrepo-cuenta-sus-anos-en-la-clandestinidad
1 comment:
very interesting piece of information. I am really tempted to read the book. I think a film would do great with such an excellent blend of love, passion, revolutionary spree narrating lives between two amazing countries, Argentina y Colombia.
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