The Dead, Apparitions, and Devils in the Narrative Work of the Tinogasta-Born Writer Joselín Cerda Rodríguez

Abstract

The narrative of Joselín Cerda Rodríguez, a writer from Catamarca and a native of Tinogasta, is of special interest within the framework of a broader research project currently under way as a postgraduate thesis. We suggest that this is a form of writing that seeks to produce a change in extratextual space, insofar as it presents itself as the expression of a sense of identity-based belonging, both personal and collective, in which memory constitutes a point of support for recovering and preserving the past of the original inhabitants of the Andean region and their descendants.

The articulation of the texts with their historical, geographical, social, cultural, and symbolic context is one of the perspectives chosen for the analysis. The other perspective is thematic and centers on the study of death. The article is based on the hypothesis that, in the narrated world, there are no distinctions among the living, the dead, and benign or malignant spirits; these forms of alterity enter and leave the represented everyday world and interact with the characters recreated in the texts.

The core of meaning derived from the texts is grounded in this contiguity between life and death. The question, then, is to ask what this particularity is due to, or to what element or elements it may be attributed. The interpretive reading is based on the following texts: “La viuda”, “La salamanca”, and “Don Pánfilo y la Luz Mala”, from Tinogasta en la leyenda (1996); “El rostro de la muerte”, from Cuentos de la realidad y la ficción (2001); and “El velorio”, from Estampas del pasado (2002).

The article concludes that the mythical-symbolic background characteristic of Northwestern Argentina and the Andean macro-region gives rise to a spiritual culture, a way of manifesting itself in everyday life and, therefore, of projecting itself into art.