“Ella”, by Juan Carlos Onetti. Necrophilia and Fiction

Abstract

The author examines “Ella”, a story by Uruguayan writer Juan Carlos Onetti, as well as other representations of Eva Peron´s death, by Jorge Luis Borges, David Viñas and Néstor Perlongher. She asserts that in the Argentina of Perón, reality and fiction merged, so all of Eva’s biographies would be “a duel of narrative versions between fiction and history or, in any case, a metaphor of history”. Rosano claims that in the examined texts, it is reality that a adopts a bizarre appearance. This would be triggered by: decomposition and bad odor as atheme, imposture from the embalmed corpse and the president, an overlapping of political and sexual connotations in the funeral scene, and Eva’s image as “a goddess wearing the lace of a small town bride” but also as a suffering and sinister “scarlet zombie”. Finally, the author points out the texts’ description of the faithful as “thousands of mumbling, mourning necrophiles” submitted to the power of myth.