Operación Masacre: Mythological Foundations of Testimony

Abstract

Using Rodolfo Walsh’s Operación Masacre as a starting point, the author draws attention, in this essay, to the testimony in other narratives. She points out that this is no bandits’ literature, since the underlying story is the memoir of victims or survivors of the unpunished violence of the State. She also claims it is neither an article nor a news chronicle: in these, there are no series of oral interviews or there is no outlining of totalizing historical images. The author insists upon the revolutionary nature of testimony, striving to build a definite truth, a discourse with no gaps. In contrast with testimonial novels, which are tools of knowledge, this genre’s meaning would be primarily historical. She also states that in Argentina the direct victims of violence are entitled to ask for retribution; under this consideration, testimony writers of the post-dictatorship period balance themselves between the belonging to the victims’ groups and the will to assume political causes. Nofal concludes saying that Walsh, unlike those authors, takes on a voice and speaks the truth from his position as a citizen and from a libertarian space.