The military as defilers of the city

Abstract

Midway between the chronicle and literary criticism, the author-comtemporary, companion and friend of the authors-reviews two novels published in the 1980s, that were set in the years in which the Uruguayan dictatorship invaded Minas, a small provincian city. Johnny Sosa’s ballad is the story of Johnny, a black man’s loss of innocence; it is also a “parable about human dignity, giving voice to those who do not have it, to the disinherited. To those with or without soldiers were always at the bottom of the bag”. The very city of Minas is also the scene of The Windows of Silence, a novel in which different voices speak; how the soldiers conduct their raids, imprison, torture and kill is narrated; also the way in which they impose the division of punishments and favours. Here, in this small city, in which the phrase “In Uruguay everyone knows each other” becomes evident, the effect of the dictatorship and denunciations that it provoked was devastating. In short, both novels narrate what took place in this country “when the soldiers profaned the city”.