Myth Turned Monument: Documenting the Historical Imaginary in Buenos Aires and Beyond

Author(s): Karen Bishop

Source: Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Winter, 2007), pp. 151-162
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4619333
Accessed: 15-03-2015 18:52 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Indiana University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Modern Literature.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Sun, 15 Mar 2015 18:52:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

MythTurnedMonument:
Documentingthe HistoricalImaginary
in BuenosAiresand Beyond
Karen
Bishop
ofCalifornia,
Santa
Barbara
University

In 1995, Argentinejournalist TomdsEloy Martinez publishedhis novel Santa

Evita as an accountof the events surroundingEva Perdn'sdeath, her body'ssubsequentembalmingand eventual exilefrom Argentina. Instead of rectifyingthe
historicaldiscrepancies
propagatedduring the seventeenyears in which her body
went missing,however,Martinez's novel workstofurther complicateand memorialize the myth ofEvita. Thistextual memorializationhas beenbuttressedby the
to
Argentinegovernment'spublicly
attributingoneofMartinez'sapocryphalphrases
Eva Perdn,the inclusionoffictionalmaterialas biographicalinformationbyEvita's
biographers,and the author'sown reflectionson the blurredand ideologicallydefunct
boundariesbetweenfiction, historyand biography.7his articleis an examinationof
how thesebiographicalappropriations,epistemological
boundaries,and Eva Perdn's
and
been
coerced
have
manhandled
those
who
attemptto tamethem,an effort
body
by

nature.
served
toconfirm
hasonly
their
artficial
which,
paradoxically,

Keywords: Eva Per6n / Argentina / history / biography / documentation

Marn writing his 1995 novel Santa Evita, Argentine author

Tomis Eloy
tinez inserts himself into a body of literature dedicated to the political
and vivacious aftermath of his compatriot Eva Per6n. He self-reflexively
locates himself within this corpus in the middle of the novel when he features
a catalogue of works in which Evita figuresdead or alive,including literatureby
fellow Argentines Julio Cortizar,Jorge Luis Borges, Nestor Perlongher,and the

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Sun, 15 Mar 2015 18:52:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

152

ofModern
Journal
Literature

UruguayanJuan Carlos Onetti. For the myth of Eva Per6n has long haunted the
Southern Cone, a cultural collective whose literary legacies prove inseparable
from the political histories that have shaped it. Ihe various attempts to render
Evita a literary artifice have also been personal and public endeavors to make
sense of a confusing and divisive political genealogy that since its inception
has sowed the filial seeds of failed tyranny and impotent revolution.
This dual motivation engenders the propagation of myth, and safeguards
myth-making from foundering up against either purely literary or merely
historical limits. Martinez understands this and uses it to his advantage to
write a novel whose most pointed achievement is to breed still more myth. He
rights none of the misconceptions that define Eva Per6n, singles out none of
her many personalities for posterity, and only further troubles the historical
evidence that might serve to explicate her stellar rise as political and cultural
icon.'Ihe author grafts literatureonto history to provide for the cultivation and
easy dissemination of the myth of Eva Per6n,because a walking, talking, shapeshifting historical protagonist will far outlive any of Evita'sother incarnations,
imaginary or real.The authorialmove is as political as it is aesthetic, which is to
say that Martinez's efforts are at once revisionaryand revolutionary.His specific
project is to dismantle the network of official "truths"that comprise a history of
Argentina that overtly masks and silences legitimate versions of the myths that
record the construction of the nation and its various national identities.
This undertakingis confirmed at the end of the work when Martinez leaves
us where he began, in the dead middle of his story:"Desde entonces, he remado
con las palabras,llevando a Santa Evita en mi barco, de una playa a la otra del
ciego mundo. No se en qu6 punto del relato estoy. Creo que en el medio. Sigo,
desde hace mucho, en el medio. Ahora tengo que escribirotra vez"(391). [Since
then, I have rowed with words, carryingSanta Evita in my boat, from one shore
of the blind world to the other. I don't know where in the story I am. In the
middle, I believe. I've been here in the middle for a long time. Now I must write
again.]' The author identifies himself as a twentieth-century Charon, rowing
up and down the River Styx between the blind shores of literatureand politics
that delimit our understanding of history. He is the ferryman who carries his
cargo across to the realm of forgetting, but he never lands. He loses his way in
between, so that the poor shade he transportssurvivesthe banks of oblivion and
turns to myth, caught somewhere between her own legacy and the underworld.
The distance that Santa Evita never crosses is critical because it means she has
gone nowhere, and that Martinez is indeed well-travelled. It is worth noting
that an earlierversion of the novel continues for another fifty pages or so, and
that Martinez decided to go back and end the final draft here, in the middle.2
T~helocation of the end predicates its beginning, both as artistic enterprise,and
as an exercise in righting historical vagrancies.But for Martinez, the undertakings are structurallyand ethically linked, so that the promulgation of myth by

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Sun, 15 Mar 2015 18:52:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

inBuenos
theHistorical
Aires
andBeyond
Documenting
Imaginary

153

way of generichybridizationis alsothe assertionof a politicalhistorythat has

been oppressedand manipulatedby those in power.
In an interviewpublishedin the journalAmericasin 1998, Martineztold
CalebBach:
Nothing is true, at the same time everythingis true.You see, in my part of the
world, documents were often falsifiedby governments.There is almost nothing

A comauthentic.
Thiswastrueduring
withEngland:
theIslasMalvinas
dispute
a
basedonpropaganda
asa pretext
to pursue
wasgenerated
pletelyfalsehistory
war.Thesameis trueduringthe so-calleddirtywar,andgenerallythatprinciple
is basic throughout my country'shistory.History is written by those in power.

a history
thatis false,whythen
Thus,if thoseinpowerhavetherightto imagine
shouldn'tnovelistsattemptwith their imaginationsto discoverthe truth?That is

thechallenge.
(15)
Martinezspeaksto the long historyof falsificationof historicaland public
recordwithin Argentinaby the government,which on a politicallevel,was
deployedto protectandbuttresswide classdistinction,the nationalistidealof
the patriagrande,and ultimatelyto coverup humanrightsabusesduringthe
nineteen-seventiesand eighties.
Literaryresponseto false historyand inauthenticatednewspresshas an
equallylong legacyin Argentineletters,datingbackto the 1845 publication
of Domingo Sarmiento'sfictionalbiographyFacundo,or CivilizationandBarbarism.Sarmiento'sresponseto and inventionof historylaid the foundations
for a literarygenre that blurs the boundariesbetween fiction and history,
politicaland aestheticinnovation,and as Martinezpoints out, imagination
andtruth.Historiansandpoliticianshavelong beenthinkingup the historyof
Argentina,whichhasleft the projectof recoveringotherhistoriesto thosewho
write fictionandwho might safelynestle alternateversionsof truthbetween
the smoothfoldsof fancy.Falsefootnotes,forgeries,plagiarismandfabricated
historicalevidencethusbecamelegitimateliterarydevicesin Argentinefiction,
and in their own right,powerfulweaponswith which to combatthe creative
nationalhistoriesbeing espousedby those in power.The challengethat Martinez identifieshereis to re-envisionhistoryand historicalmethodby way of
an imaginationthatdoes not layclaimto a nationalistArgentineteleology,but
allowsfor and activelyseeksout a multiplicityof versionsand possibilitiesof
what it meansto be Argentine.
Martinezrevisitsthe polemicsof this endeavorone year laterwhen he
asks, in a lecturepresentedat the CulturalCenter of the Inter-American
Development Bank in Washington D.C.:
Have archivesbeen constructedby educatedminorities and powerfulpoliticians
to serve their own version of history; and is that history "a book of marvels,"

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Sun, 15 Mar 2015 18:52:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

154

Journal
ofModern
Literature

whichconceals,hidesandfictionalizes
reality?Why shouldthe novel,whichis
anundisguised
be
denied
the
fiction,
rightto proposeits ownversionof historical
truth?Why do we findit hardto believethatthroughfiction- thelie thatdares
to speakits name--historymightbe told in a waythatis alsoauthenticor,at
leastas authenticas thatfoundin the documents?
(6)
History strives to work the fabricationsit weaves back into a body of work that
stealthily claims objectivityand authenticity,while fiction shamelesslyavows its
inventedness. But a "lie that speaks its name"is less a falsehood than a fiction
that disguises itself as truth. Martinez is right to question why, then, there is
continued institutional and philosophical resistance to housing history among
the archivesof fiction. Why do we--we the students, the academy,the reading
publics--expect that a distinction be made between the official history of a
country and the fiction that history impels? What doctrine of objectivity still
has us so convinced that reality might be recordedand reproducedvia an empty
vessel of perspective?More importantly,what is at stake in a widespread cultural and philosophical unwillingness to relinquishat least part of the discipline
of history to the uncertainties of fiction? What realities arewe overlooking or
bypassing by resisting the possibility that acts of memory might be more properly worked out in the field of fiction than in the domain of history? Whose
gaze do we avoid by demanding that the production of history be confined to
Objectivist procedure?
In his philosophical work on history, Walter Benjamin anticipated possible answers to these questions. But the query and its ramifications continue
to warrant consideration. As he writes in his tract "Theses on the Philosophy
of History": "The current amazement that the things we are experiencing are
'still' possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. This amazement
is not the beginning of knowledge--unless it is the knowledge that the view
of history which gives rise to it is untenable"(257). What is at stake, then, in
a reluctance to locate history outside of the boundaries afforded it by historical record is the opportunity to understand how history is decided upon--or
rather, to ask ourselves according to what ethical principles, traditions and
political motivations we construct it--and how events that may be labeled
"historical"in import or nature occur also in fields of vision not traditionally
constructed by historians.To recognize that we produce and experience history
in the same way we did hundreds of years ago, that the same kinds of events
and cultural revelations continue to define our historical expectations and
perspectives,is not an intimation of knowledge unless these reflections lead us
toward an etiology of history that structurallyassimilates into its methodology
an evaluation of the roles that documentation, dissemination and politics play
in the construction and preservation of"historical fact."

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Sun, 15 Mar 2015 18:52:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

theHistorical
inBuenos
Aires
andBeyond
Documenting
Imaginary

155

What is amazing is not the wreckage of history piling up at our feet, but
that we do not recognize how it got there. Our view of history is untenable,
for Benjamin, because it makes room only for the archiving of progress (or
the progression of archiving), and does not allow for the possibility that history does not re-invent itself, is not cyclical in nature,but is in fact one single
catastrophethat we are still generating due, in part,to our inability to recognize
that history-as we know it-does not move (us) forward, but entraps us in
a conceptual and ethical standstill, the confines of which we perceive to be the
limits of humanity instead of what limits humanity.This standstill permitted
the horrorsof the twentieth century (the half of which Benjaminwould not live
to see), which remain uninstructiveif we map out our epistemological inquiries
about them according to the extent of their horror,instead of studying them to
re-evaluate our ideas about where history comes from and to re-envision the
methods we employ to construct history, teach it, and respond to it.
It makes sense, then, that any project involved in redefining how we
construct history should seek out alternate forms and versions of historical
documentation, and that fiction is a valid venue for the production of history.
As Martinez points out, the novel is an "undisguisedfiction"that does not strive
to representeternal truths,thus making it a trustworthycatalystfor the production of truths, historical and otherwise. The novel, however realist,cannot help
but revealthe method of its own making by way of chapter or episode divisions,
narrativestructure and philosophical reflections.The postmodern novel especially endeavors to be transparentin its production, making frequent narrative
and structural use of written artifacts- diaries, letters, newspaper articles,
historical documents and forgeries- interviews, cinematographic techniques
and intertextualplay in orderto tell its story.3Authors no longer claim to derive
their inspiration nor information from a single, authoritariansource, but prefer to expose what they have mined and how from the variegated expanses of
popular culture,literary and philosophical history and global and local events.
Such artlessnessis what makes contemporaryfiction a reliable resourcefor heteroglossic versions of history,accounts that are at least as authentic, if not more
so in their scope and diversity,than traditional historical record.What is most
significant here, however, is not that truths are bent or blurred (though they
are),but that the concept of "truth"is blasted out of the continuum along which
we construct history, and subsequently, reality.4Contemporary fiction blasts
free our ideals of truth from a continuity of historical objectivism which aims
to preserve and market them as object and commodity, and to de-politicize
them within a free market economy. Fiction has the power-political and
explode truth and redistribute it along diverse historical
imaginative-to
continuities, none of which has the singularability to representhistorical truth,
but that together create a constellation of historical possibility which both
collapses and expands previously-constructed limits of human action.

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Sun, 15 Mar 2015 18:52:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

156

Journal
ofModern
Literature

A telling example:Evita first met Per6n on January22, 1944 at a charity in

Luna Parkfor the victims of an earthquakethat had devastated San Juan some
days before. There exist various and contradictory accounts of how they happened to meet, be seated next to one another,and leave together that night. But
the most sought after detail concerns what Evita might have said to Colonel
Per6n to attract, and keep, his attention. It would have had to be something
catching, for Per6n was alreadyan important minister in the government, and
Evita only a second-rate radio actress among many other artists lending their
talents to the benefit. In Santa Evita, Martinez recounts Eva'sfirst interchange
with the Colonel as follows:
- Colonel-dijo, clavaindolelos ojos castafios.
- ,Qu6, hija?- respondi6 sin mirarla.
dl,
- Graciaspor existir.(192)
"Colonel,"she said,rivetingher darkbrowneyes on him. "What is it, my girl?"he
answered,without looking at her."Thanksfor existing."

He then attests to the veracity of this dialogue by testifying to his meticulous

research:
He reconstruidocadalinea de ese diilogo maisde una vez en los ArchivosNacionales de Washington.Las he leido en los labios de los personajes.Con frecuencia,
congelklas imaigenesen busca de suspiros,de pausascortadaspor la moviola,de
silabasdisimuladaspor un perfilque se escurreo por un ademainque no veo. Pero
no hay nada mis, apartede esas palabrasque ni siquierase oyen. (192)
I have reconstructedeveryline of that exchangemore than once at the National
Archivesin Washington.I have readit on the lips of the characters.I have often
stopped the images in a freeze-frame in searchof sighs, of pauses cut out at the
editing table,of syllableshidden by a profile that glides past or by a gesture that
I fail to see. But there is nothing else, apartfrom those words that can'teven be
heard.
What the author stresses here is not his careful research, but rather his facility
for invention. He tells us outright that he has "reconstructed"- not recorded
nor documentedEva's first words to Per6n, and that he has done so despite
the fact that their conversation is not even audible. Martinez offers us an
out, a chance to believe him, when he claims to have read the words on the

lips of the characters(his characters,mind you, the ones in his novel), and by
couching this textual observation in a painstaking search for other forms of
communication, of which he finds none. Yet is this plausible? The explanation

reads like a testament to responsible historical investigation, but upon closer

examination asserts precisely what is not present by way of what might have

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Sun, 15 Mar 2015 18:52:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

theHistorical
inBuenos
Aires
andBeyond
Documenting
Imaginary

157

been. What we are left with, what we remember,is that "thereis nothing else,
apart from those words that can'teven be heard."Martinez asserts what is not
there, what he cannot attest to, by turning that absence into the only evidence
we can access. The reader can either choose to believe him or decide that his
prevaricationrenders questionable the rest of his historical documentation. It
is arguablethat Martinez, given the choice between one reader-responseor the

other,wouldwiselyopt foreachat differentmoments.Forin orderto construct

the myth of Eva Per6n, and to ensure that myth continually reinvent itself,
his work must depend equally on a certain level of credulity from his readers
(any fiction does), and a liberal amount of mistrust and skepticism. That his
testimony allows for both, and frustrates any definitive resolution, is itself a
testament to the coeval impurities of historical record and the advances made
in the technologies of fiction.
The conversation is indeed apocryphal,a fact that the author revealsin his
interview with Bach. He recounts what he first made of the historical footage
(a version that differs from his novelistic one), what he made out of it, and how
his fabrication entered a public's historical imagination:
I was looking at footage of an artisticfestivalon January22, 1944, at Luna Park
Stadiumin BuenosAires organizedto benefithomelessvictimsof a terribleearthquake.That'swhereEvitafirstmet the colonel.She managedto seat herselfnext to
Per6n.At one point she leans over and sayssomething,but there is no sound and
you can'tread her lips, so I asked myself repeatedly,"whatcould she have said?"
And then in my imaginationI inventedan exchangein which Evitasays,"Colonel"
and somewhatdistracted,Per6n respondswith "Que'hija?"and she continuesby
saying"Graciaspor existir."[Thankyou for existing.] That phraselater appeared
in a novel by someone else, also two biographiesof Evita Per6n, one by Alicia
Dujovne Ortiz (1995) and anotherby FerminChivez (1990). It kept multiplying
like the bodies of Evita! Finally,a few years ago, at the Museo de Peronismoin
Buenos Aires, they installedcarvedmarbleplaquesbearingfamous quotesby the
Per6ns.Includedwas the phraseI madeup,"Colonel,graciaspor existir"attributed
to Eva Per6n.I wrote an article in the newspaperexplainingI had invented the
quote, but it wouldn'tgo away. he fanatic Peronists,in particular,insisted she
reallysaid it, thus it enteredthe language.Myths areborn like this! (19)

Martinez admits to inventing the dialogue because he is unable to read Eva's

lips on-screen, but does not confess to having attempted to alter either the
historical record or history, except post factum. He does not claim, in Santa
Evita, that the passage he recordsis anything but a reconstruction,yet he does
try to stop the historical moment he has fabricated from becoming part of
history. And why? Martinez has made a career out of collapsing the generic
and philosophical borders between history and fiction, so why should he care
to remind his reading public that the quotation was his, not Evita's?Why

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Sun, 15 Mar 2015 18:52:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

158

ofModern
Literature
Journal

should it have mattered to the author that the Museo del Peronismocite Eva
Per6n erroneously?The course of Peronism itself has been so vastly confused
that the historical records that account for it are alreadyprecariouslybalanced
between documentation and desire; why wouldn't Martinez then expect that
the museum constructed to house the party accept the attempt to distinguish
between the "real"Per6ns and the ones history invented as a futile and irrelevant
exercise? But this is a kind interpretation of the museum's motivations; for
history, as we know, is recorded by those whom best it serves, and Peronism is
certainly fortified by an account of Eva'sfirst words to Per6n that identifies him
as savior of an ailing nation. Perhaps this is why Martinez would have wanted
to set the record straight and leave historical events properly uninterpreted
and effectively irretrievable,so that they might remain open to interpretation
and continue to prove worthy objects of study. A novelistic interpretation of
the historical aporia opened up by the inaudibility of what may have been
a momentous conversation, and what may have amounted to nothing more
than "Is this seat taken?"leaves the event unrecovered,consigned to the past
and safely out of the manipulative grasp of history. But more importantly,the
gap in record must stand in order to make sense of what is to follow, both
historically and mythologically.
As Martinez notes, "'Graciaspor existir' es la frase que parte en dos el
destino de Evita. En La razdn de mi vida, ella ni siquiera se acuerda de que
la dijo"(192). ["Thanksfor existing"is the phrase that splits Evita's destiny in
two. In My Mission in Life, she doesn't even recall that she said it.] But the
fact is, she takes pains to record the necessary aporia, for, as she writes in her
memoirs, "The meeting left an indelible mark on my heart; and I cannot omit
a description of it, because it meant the beginning of my real life"(Razdn 17).
The description she offers up, however, reveals that she leaves the moment
untouched, for she glosses over what she said with what she would have wanted
to say,or what she meant to say,which Martinez records in Santa Evita: "Si,
como usted dice, la causa del pueblo es su propia causa,por muy lejos que haya
que ir en el sacrificio no dejare de estar a su lado hasta desfallecer"(193). [If,
as you say, the cause of the people is your own cause, no matter how far the
sacrificeleads, I shall be at your side until I faint from exhaustion.] As Martinez
points out, this invented version is far too complicated and wordy, and doesn't
correspond to the images caught on the newsreel. Eva's memory of history,
as recorded by her ghostwriter-in a book, it is worth mentioning, whose
copyrights were owned by her husband-is not only unreliable, but untrue.
The board of the Museo del Peronismomust have also known this, for, length
notwithstanding, why otherwise did its members not choose to engrave this
speech on the plaque that memorializes Eva Per6n at the museum? Martinez's
reconstruction is far more probable than Eva's, and besides, is easier for an
audience to remember. In pointing out, then, that the phrase by which Eva

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Sun, 15 Mar 2015 18:52:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

inBuenos
theHistorical
Aires
andBeyond
Documenting
Imaginary

159

will always be remembered is apocryphal, the good author's intention is not

to fix history, but to remind a public of the inconsistencies inherent in any
attempt at documenting the past, and again, to challenge the "official"history
offered up by government sources.Martinez's public reaction to the museum's
plagiarism speaks directly to the ambiguities he sought to affirm in Santa
Evita and refuels the myth of the woman he so carefullyconstructed.That said,
his response should also serve to remind careful readers of the author's own
practiced epistemological sleight-of-hand.
He tracesthe trajectoryof his apocryphalphrase from its inaudible recording through to its appearanceas historical record in two biographies, both of
which are widely regarded as well-researched and reliable accounts of Eva
Per6n'slife. But Martinez skips a step.When he cites the phrase in SantaEvita,
he is stealing from a scene in his earlier work La novela de Perdn [ThePerdn
Novel], in which Juan Per6n tells the author,during a series of interviews that
Martinez indeed conducted in Madrid in the seventies, of his first meeting
with Eva Duarte. Per6n recounts the famous phrase, which Martinez then
includes in a work which he purports narratesreal events "using techniques of
the novel" (Bach 19). This "true fiction"predates by five years the publication
of Las memoriasdelgeneral [ TheGeneral'sMemoirs],in which the author critically recounts the substance of his interviews with the exiled ex-president, then
living at Puerta de Hierro on the outskirts of the Spanish capital. Ortiz and
Chivez also take their accounts of this meeting from La noveladePerdn,which
proves to be a problematic source for accuratebiographical information.
La novela de Perdn presents itself as a narrative account of Martinez's
interview with Per6n, couched in the context of the general's return out of
exile in 1973 to Buenos Aires in order to reassume the presidency of his
country.It is told from the biographer'sperspective,yet is a compilation of his
questions to the dictator, Per6n'sresponses, and Martinez's own commentary
and philosophical reflection. Interlaced throughout the text are passages that
the general reads from the memoirs he is (supposedly) writing, which are
indicated by either introduction or indentation. Per6n, as the narrative tells
us, is not writing his memoirs alone. He records them and his secretary,Jose
L6pez Rega, transcribes and edits them. Per6n reads the copies that L6pez
makes and corrects and approvesthem, yet our narratormakes it clear that the
general's memory is faulty, his secretary'simagination and political scheming
vast, and that the memoirs end up being as much fiction as memory. Martinez
writes,"[Per6n] est~ corrigiendo sus Memorias. O mejor dicho, va colocandose
a si mismo en las Memorias que le ha escrito L6pez: el General lleva meses
viandolo en el arduo trabajode transcribircasetes y enredardocumentos"(43).
[(Per6n) is correcting his Memoirs. Or, rather,he is in the process of locating
himself in the Memoirs that L6pez has written for him-for months now, the
General has been seeing him hard at work transcribingcassettes and shuffling

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Sun, 15 Mar 2015 18:52:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

160

Journal
ofModern
Literature

documents.]5 That Martinez is writing a memoir of Per6n writing his memoirs is no accident; the passage serves as metacommentary of the author'sown
project, as much as I am loathe to draw any analogy between Martinez and
L6pez.6 But, Martinez points out, ghostwriting someone else's autobiography
is a tricky business: material gets altered, corrected, edited. The final draft is
always severalversions removed from the original, which is to say,how things
"really"happened. Any biographer,Martinez warns us, is guilty of rewriting
history. He makes this point again-as if in broad, bold lights-when he
decides to title his biography a "novel."The careful reader,then, will proceed
cautiously and be prepared to treat all material as suspect, regardless of what
credible witness provides the work its source.
It seems Ortiz and Ch~vez are guilty of wanting La novela de Perdnto be
something that it is not. Despite the great deal of (auto)biographicalinformation the work provides, it is not Per6n'sbiography, and does not claim to be.
The passage from which they cite Eva's fictitious phrase forms part of Per6n's
(purported) memoirs. The interlude occurs while Per6n is driving through
Madrid, ill and forlorn,besieged by memories of his time in Spain, and of Evita.
He asks his gardener,who is driving, "?Paraque al cabo de los afios vengan a
suceder estas desmemorias, Lucas?"(266) [Why do these lapses of memory
happen after so many long years, Lucas?] and then asks himself, ",Por qu6 me
turba hoy Eva esta despedida que s61o es mia? Ya todo se me da vuelta. No
se si estoy ydndome o si mas bien me llego" (266-7). [Why is Eva disturbing
today this farewell that is mine alone? Everything is making my head spin now.
I don't know if I'm going or coming.] T-hegeneral is not well here, he is confused, and his memory poor. And then the memoir is interrupted by memory:
as he prepares to leave Madrid, Per6n remembers the first time he met Eva.
The account he offers up is almost identical to the one Martinez cites in Santa
Evita, a reconstructionwhich we now know to be a fabrication.Granted, Ortiz
and Chivez would not have had access to this information,as Martinez did not
reveal his imaginary sources until after they had published their biographies.
But La novela de Perdnoffers up substantial textual proof that it is not to be
trusted as a reliable source from which to cite biographical narrative,nor is it
a wholly accurate account of the author'sinterview with the deposed dictator.
The biographers'error is understandable-Martinez goes to great pains to
conflate fact and fiction and memory into one believable read--but it serves a
cautionary tale: do not trust a work that calls itself a novel. It also illuminates
the problematicsinherent in biography:neither sources nor researchcan necessarily be trusted as infallible components of historical documentation, as the
genre would like to lead us to believe they can.
Ortiz's account in particular,while indeed only one of several possible
versions of the meeting that she presents, problematizes the recording of
biographical information. She writes, "iSerPverdad que le dijo esas palabras

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Sun, 15 Mar 2015 18:52:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

theHistorical
inBuenos
Aires
andBeyond
Documenting
Imaginary

161

decisivas que el viejo exiliado madrilefio le confiara a su bi6grafo:'Gracias por

existir'?"
(Ortiz103). [Did she reallyutterthe decisivewordsthatthe old exiled
colonelwouldlaterconfideto his biographer:"Thankyou for existing?"]
This
biographerthen follows the question with a brief psychoanalyticinterpretation
of the line as indicative of Evita's self-deprecation, a reading that itself works
to validate the veracity of the reported speech. The real problem here, however,
is not Ortiz's question, but that she attributes the phrase to Per6n and not to
his "biographer."Ihe work provided her with many structural,narrative and
paratextualclues that Per6n'smemory was unreliable, and his memoirs not of
his own invention. Per6n never repeated the phrase that Evita never spoke.

But thatdoesn'tmeanthe declamationisn'thistorical.For,sixtyyearsafterEva

nevercomplimentedherwayinto history(at leastthatanyonecan remember)
on that long afternoon, the fictitious--and now biographical--remark has
come to memorialize the what-should-have-been-said-instead of history.The
famous place-holder stands as a spectacular monument to the fabrications,
intransigencies and manhandling that go into constructing history. "Thanks
for existing"is historical because it records a moment that proved inaccessible
to history.

Notes
1. Trans.Helen Lane. All other translationsare mine, unless otherwise noted.
2. See Caleb Bach'sinterviewwith Martinez in Americas,vol. 50, no. 3 (May/June1998).
3. See Lloyd Hughes Davies'"Portraitsof a Lady: PostmodernReadings of TomdisEloy Martinez's
SantaEvita"(ModernLanguageReview,UK. Vol.95, No. 2) for a discussionof the extensivepostmodern
narrativetechniquesemployedby Martinez.
4. My referencehere is to Benjamin'sreflectionson the constructionof truth,the historicalobjectand
which Susan Buck-Morss elucidatesin her work TheDialecticsof Seeing:Walter
political "awakening"
Benjaminand theArcadesProject(Cambridge:MIT Press, 1989). The historical object, accordingto
Benjamin,when caught in the tension between past and present,rendersthe truth political and visible, which manifestsitself in the "dialecticalimage."'his image,cites Buck-Morss,"is identicalto the
historicalobject;it justifiesblastingthe latterout of the continuum of history'scourse"(219).
5. Trans.Helen Lane.
6. Upon his returnto Argentina,and under the auspicesof the Peronistgovernment,L6pez Rega set
up the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance.The so-calledTriple A evolved into the state-sponsored
paramilitarypolice force that effected the "waragainst subversion"in Argentina through systematic
strategiesof terror.

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Sun, 15 Mar 2015 18:52:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

162

ofModern
Journal
Literature

Works
Cited
Bach, Caleb."Imaginingthe Truth."Amiricas50.3 (May/June1998): 15-21.
Trans.HarryZohn. Ed. Hannah
Benjamin,Walter."Theseson the Philosophyof History."Illuminations.
Arendt.New York:Schocken Books, 1969. 253-264.
Martinez,Tomis Eloy."Myth,History and Fiction in Latin America."Trans.MargueriteFeitlowitz.
Encuentros32 (May 1999). Lecture sponsoredby the IDB CulturalCenter Lectures Program.
Inter-AmericanDevelopment Bank,Washington,D.C. 27 May 1999.
. La Novela de Perdn.Madrid:Alianza Editorial,1989.
. SantaEvita. Buenos Aires: EditorialPlaneta, 1995.
. SantaEvita. Trans.Helen Lane. New York:Knopf, 1996.
. ThePer6nNovel.Trans.Helen Lane. New York:Knopf, 1998.
Ortiz, Alicia Dujovne. Eva Perdn.La biografia.Madrid:SantillanaEdiciones Generales,S.L., 1996.
. Eva Perdn.Trans.Shawn Fields.New York:St. Martin'sPress,1996.
Per6n,Eva. La razdnde mi vida. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Peuser,1951.

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Sun, 15 Mar 2015 18:52:16 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions