Pandemia y violencia política en «Allá afuera hay monstruos», de Edmundo Paz Soldán

Tras la publicación de Los días de la peste (2017), novela premonitoria que anticipa la pandemia global del COVID-19, el escritor Edmundo Paz Soldán vuelve a sacar una obra sobre los horrores derivados de la propagación del virus (al que llaman el «bicho»), titulada Allá afuera hay monstruos (2021). Ambientada en un mundo distópico y guerracivilista, Paz Soldán recrea con mano maestra cada una de las circunstancias que se han vivido de forma global: el contagio imparable del virus, la falta de equipamiento sanitario, las tensiones económicas derivadas del confinamiento, las revueltas sociales, la contaminación informativa, el protagonismo de los negacionistas y antivacunas o los pseudocientíficos mesiánicos con remedios milagrosos para combatir la pandemia. La obra está inspirada y es un homenaje a Cartucho (1931), libro de relatos sobre la Revolución mexicana de la escritora Nellie Campobello.

Los [dos] cartuchos de Nellie Campobello

In 1931, Nellie Campobello published Cartucho. Nine years later, in 1940, a second edition appeared, about which not much has been said. With the exception that it is usually mentioned to assert that Campobello modified it under the influence of the author of El águila y la serpiente, the 1940 edition was left somewhat erased by the third edition (1960), in the same way that each edition’s corresponding characteristics were also erased. This piece reviews some of the features that characterize both editions, with the intention of showing what was already present in the first edition, and what the author added or enhanced afterward. It also presents the context in which the second edition emerged (Campobello’s interest in history, her relationship with Austreberta Rentería, the publication of her book Las manos de mamá), and it questions the author’s motives to propose Cartucho (1940) as a set of “true tales” in opposition to the revolutionary “legend” stated in official history. In the conducted analysis, we can appreciate the expansion of some of the literary strategies present in the first edition (the multiplicity of testimonial voices and the contribution of women as witnesses to the facts) and the permanence of others that appeared in 1931 (the infantile narrative voice, the poetic images associated to the war and to the infantilization of the men that fought in the Mexican Revolution). The premise in this article is that both editions defy the concepts of truth, history, and fiction, in the way we usually conceive them, but that in 1940, Campobello expanded some of the literary strategies that she used in 1931 as a function of the emphasis that she put in the testimonials of a multitude of women and men that lived the civil war in the North and to whom, in the process of officialization and institutionalization of the Mexican Revolution, the truth of their own history had been denied, according to the author.

Liminalidad de una mirada infantil antibélica: Cartucho, Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno y Cerezas

El comienzo y el final de una novela pueden ser umbrales estratégicos para la construcción discursiva dentro de la narración literaria, sobre todo cuando el referente del discurso es un acontecimiento problemático como lo es una guerra civil. Como señala Italo Calvino, los extremos de un texto son lugares claves porque permiten rastrear ─desde la postura autoral─ un importante potencial reflexivo más allá de su nivel eminentemente narrativo y literario. Por otro lado, como identifica Frank Kermode, recae en el final el sentido que determina la temporalidad de la narración y consecuentemente su registro discursivo. A partir de estas premisas, y con el objetivo de poner en evidencia la relevancia de la construcción discursiva en correspondencia de dichos umbrales, el artículo propone un análisis comparado del discurso crítico y humanista presente en tres novelas de la guerra civil: Cartucho (1931) de Nellie Campobello, Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (1947) de Italo Calvino y Cerezas (2008) de Aurora Correa.

Representaciones de la masculinidad en Cartucho de Nellie Campobello

This article focuses on Cartucho (1931) by the Mexican writer Nellie Campobello. Through the analysis of three vignettes, I present the destabilization of the traditional representations of the male subject as well as the univocal association of the sex / gender categories. I show how their stories reveal the heterogeneity of prose over the Mexican Revolution, by configuring a spectrum of meaning designed to link the home with the land of their ancestors. The dust and dirt associated with the earth dignify people and confer virile attributes, regardless of whether the characters are male or female. Such displacements and crossings support the arrival of a new social order.

Literatura de revolución y literatura revolucionaria: dos novelas cortas

El presente trabajo aborda dos novelas cortas de los años treinta en México. Por una parte, muestra el carácter híbrido, en el caso de la novela Las manos de mamá, de Nellie Campobello; por la otra, describe el recurso de la metáfora narrativa que Torres Bodet emplea en Proserpina rescatada, mecanismo que proviene de Marcel Proust y que se distancia de los comúnmente asociados con la novela lírica.

Presencia, posibilidades y posiciones de la escritura errante en México: el caso Campobello

En su libro La escritura errante: ilegibilidad y políticas del estilo en Latinoamérica (2016), Julio Prieto no incluye ningún texto mexicano, lo cual suscita la interrogante de si esta ausencia refleja una marginalización mayor de la llamada “mala escritura” latinoamericana en unas literaturas nacionales que en otras. En este ensayo doy un primer paso para abordar esta pregunta, argumentando que México cuenta con una digna representación de dicho tipo de escritura en Cartucho (1931). En este texto, Nellie Campobello elabora su escritura errante gracias a una serie de procedimientos estilísticos que señalan las carencias del cuerpo social y que apuntan a una variada red de textos y tradiciones que podrían haber influido en ella. El análisis que propongo desemboca en algunas reflexiones acerca de la relación entre la escritura errante, la narrativa del norte de México y las normas impuestas desde el centro geográfico y cultural del país para tratar de forjar un canon literario nacional.

Campobello, Nellie (1900--1986) and Campobello, Gloria (1911--1968)

Sisters Nellie and Gloria Campobello migrated from Northern Mexico to Mexico City in 1923 where they became influential figures in the development of Mexican dance and the professionalization of dancers. During the 1930s, as dancers, choreographers, teachers, and dance administrators, the Campobello sisters joined the government’s efforts to develop a Mexican dance form that could reflect the country’s modern aspirations and revolutionary ideals, a nationalist project that started with the armed uprising of 1910. During this revolutionary period their work reflected the mestizo Modernism that Mexican muralists and musicians had been articulating since the early 1920s by combining elements from European modernist aesthetics and Mexico’s indigenous cultures. The Campobellos participated in government-sponsored cultural missions that comprised brigades of artists and teachers who, as part of Mexico’s post-revolutionary project, traveled to rural areas in order to educate indigenous populations, in subjects ranging from literacy to agricultural techniques. These nationalist efforts prompted artists and teachers like Nellie and Gloria to document traditional and indigenous costumes, crafts, musical rhythms and dances as symbols of an emerging national identity. The Campobello sisters and others like them used these materials in combination with ballet and other movement techniques in order to compose choreographic works that were representative of the nation. Gloria Campobello eventually became Mexico’s prima ballerina and the two sisters founded the Ballet of Mexico City in 1941. In addition to her work in dance, Nellie Campobello wrote several books and was the only female writer to publish narrations of the Mexican revolution based on her own childhood experiences.