On Politics and Psychoanalysis in Puig's Second Trilogy

Abstract

By MARY LORENZO ALCALA In an interview reproduced in his book O continente suhmerso the Brazilian journalist and critic Leo Gilson Rebeiro asked Manuel Puig if he was a leftist liberal.1 Puig, who usually avoided speaking of politics, answered: I would strive for a democratic socialism (he smiles) which seems impossible, a socialism that would take into account the needs of the country national needs without turning into national socialism. A socialism that would not use for its models guidelines from abroad, and a socialism with freedom of expression. That seems to me to be the ideal.2 The article, which one can assume is from 1980, even though the book's author does not record the date, leaves us with Puig's conscious testimony.3 It deals with a definition of his political predilections established with the deliberation and caution of one who knows that what he says will be published and therefore subject to criticism. In any case, a declaration of social democratic faith was not common for a Latin American intellectual at a time when his colleagues either kept outdated commitments from the 1960s in tow, like Garcia Marquez, painted a shift in self-criticism to justify their adhesion to neoliberalism, like Vargas Llosa, or demonstrated their veiled sympathies with or expressed support of military governments which, by that time, had begun to decline. The rarity of such declarations by Puig, in addition to the fact that he had no tendency to make such remarks, is reason enough to render the transcripts valuable as documentary evidence of great importance. Nevertheless, let us not trust intuition, as we often do in these matters. Only the creative texts themselves can shed light on the coherence between what the writer says and what he feels. After exhausting his primary testimony in the first three novels, Puig composes another trilogy, this time marked by the sociopolitical events that occurred in Argentina during the 1970s: leftist organizations took steps toward clandestine affairs and guerrilla violence, the Peronist government moved toward the right wing, the two extremist sectors confronted each other, there was a military coup and repression. In one way or another these elements from reality are all present in El beso de la mujer arana (1976; Eng. Kiss of the Spider Woman, 1979), Pubis angelical (1979; Eng. 1986), and Maldicion eterna a quien lea estas pdginas (1980; Eng. Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages, 1982).