Regreso del pasado: Madame Lynch y el imaginario paraguayo

Abstract

In the context of historical revisionism that characterized Latin American theater in the last two decades of the twentieth century, Milton Schinca wrote Madame Lynch (1989). This essay looks at two political readings of Lynch's marginality in Paraguayan society, and of her relationship to power as a way of highlighting social constructs. It does so by analyzing the deliberate emphasis of the material conditions of Elisa Lynch, the function of her body, her use of visual and linguistic signs, the tension between power and marginality, and how monologues work as an attempt to deconstruct the patriarchal view of Madame Paraguay. This leads to a reading of the playtext as an attempt to reconsider Uruguay's responsibility in the War of Paraguay (1865-1870).