Notes
- References to the story are taken from Jorge Luis Borges, Obras completas (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 1974), p. 789.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Borges, Obras completas, p. 788.
- Ibid.
- See Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (Detroit: Black and Red, 1970).
- See Jean Baudrillard, Simulacres et simulation (Paris: Editions Galilée, 1981). It is perhaps no coincidence that Baudrillard's commentary on simulation and simulacra takes another short text by Borges from El hacedor as its point of departure—not “El simulacro” but “Del rigor en la ciencia.” Borges, Obras completas, p. 847.
- See, for example, the situation with respect to Mexico in the two-volume anthology introduced and edited by Antonio Castro Leal, La novela del México colonial (Mexico: Aguilar Mexicana de Ediciones, 1965).
- For a fuller explanation of the term “new historical novel” and an analysis of some key texts, see María Cristina Pons, Memorias del olvido. La novela histórica de fines del siglo XX (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1996).
- History and its reconstruction is also the underpinning of several other novels by this same group of three authors. Note, in particular, the mythologizing of the history of Colombia in García Márquez's Cien años de soledad or his reconstruction of a real crime in Crónica de una muerte anunciada.
- Tomás Eloy Martínez, Santa Evita (Buenos Aires: Editorial Planeta, 1995), pp. 11, 390–391.
- Chapter 8 of Santa Evita, “Una mujer alcanza su eternidad,” begins with the question “¿Cuáles son los elementos que construyeron el mito de Evita?” (p. 183). It includes a description and analysis of seven different factors and concludes (pp. 197–205) with a commentary on the fascination that her story and her death in particular have had for writers and performers of different kinds.
- The chapter headings are all placed between quotation marks and the source and date of each fragment is noted in the table of contents of the novel.
- In Santa Evita, they are the titles of Chapters 1, 4 and 5 and are taken respectively from a radio broadcast of 7 December 1951, from a public declaration on 22 August 1951 and from La razón de mi vida, where the phrase in question figures as both the last line and the title of Chapter 5.
- Martinez, Santa Evita, p. 66.
- Ibid., pp. 99–114.
- Ibid., p. 55. He means Colonel Moori Koenig, not Colonel Perón.
- Ibid., p. 97.
- Ibid., p. 86.
- Ibid., p. 116.
- For a commentary on some of the basic issues raised by the testimonial novel, see one of the foundation essays on the subject, John Beverley's “The Margin at the Center: On Testimonio,” in his Against Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), pp. 69–86. Recent allegations by David Stoll in Rigoberto Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans that Menchú's (auto)biography is less than historically accurate complicate matters somewhat, but also make it necessary to clarify what kind of literature the testimonial novel really is. See “Nobel winner accused of fabrication,” Manchester Guardian Weekly, 27 December 1998, p. 6, and Beverley's “Menchú avec Lacan” (forthcoming in Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos).
- See Martínez, Santa Evita, pp. 67–76, 233–242.
- Martínez conveys the idea metaphorically: “No iba a dejar que las supersticiones me arredraran. No iba a contar a Evita como maleficio ni como mito. Iba a contarla tal como la había soñado: como una mariposa que batía adelante las alas de su muerte mientras las de su vida volaban hacia atrás. La mariposa estaba suspendida siempre en el mismo punto del aire y por eso yo tampoco me movía. Hasta que descubrí el truco. No habría que preguntarse cómo uno vuela o para qué vuela, sino ponerse simplemente a volar.” Ibid., p. 78.
- Ibid., p. 12. The butterfly metaphor is also used is other contexts (see n. 24).
- Ibid.
- Ibid., p. 84. Perón would also claim as much, as Martinez also notes (ibid., p. 83).
- Ibid.
- Ibid., pp. 116–118.
- Ibid., p. 144.
- There are other “errors” and anachronisms in the film. Among the most remarkable is the reappearance of Agustín Magaldi in Evita's life on the night in January 1944 when she first met Perón. Magaldi died in September 1938.
- In the course of one of the songs, “The Lady's Got Potential,” performed by the character Che Guevara, Evita is referred to as “The greatest social climber since Cinderella.”
- The anachronistic identity of the narrator is, of course, a further way of distancing the story from its strictly historical roots.
- The fact that the character of Evita is played by Madonna adds a further dimension, which I will not, however, explore here.