Authority and Identity in Rulfo's El llano en llamas

Abstract

There is a point in most of the stories of El llano en llamas where an individual comes up against the discourse of others, in the form of an accusation or declaration, and is annulled by it. His memory, knowledge, consciousness, sanity or even identity is destroyed. My first task is to describe the mechanism of that loss of consciousness. Though the alien discourse originates in a clearly identifiable figure of authority (cacique, parent, priest, government, army, the law), it is usually mediated by an unidentifiable impersonal or plural voice. The second question is thus why the voice of authority has become so fragmented, impersonal and empty. Three factors recur constantly: violence, transgression of structure, often family structure, its most basic form, and the death of the father. I have found it difficult to establish any strict hierarchy between these factors, any clear process of cause and effect. Rather they seem to be linked in an ever degenerating vicious circle. En la madrugada provides a labyrinthine example of the mediation of the annihilating word, when the cowherd Esteban is accused of killing his land-owner employer: Me llegaron con ese aviso. Y que dizque yo lo habia matado, dijeron los dfceres. Bien pudo ser; pero yo no me acuerdo (48).1 In Macario, the repetition by the authoritarian figure of the madrina of the plural accusation that the boy had attacked a woman turns the report into an absolute truth for him, again to the detriment of his knowledge and memory: no se por qu6 me amarrard las manos; pero dice que porque dizque luego hago locuras. Un dia inventaron que yo andaba ahorcando a alguien; que le aprete el pescuezo a una sefiora nada mas por nomas. Yo no me acuerdo. Pero, a todo esto, es mi madrina la que dice lo que yo hago y ella nunca anda con mentiras (8). In Diles que no me maten, the accusing voice of the colonel comes from inside a