Uncivilized Remembrance in Luisa Valenzuela's "La travesía"

Author(s): Nancy J. Gates Madsen

Source: Letras Femeninas, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Invierno 2005), pp. 99-121
Published by: Asociacion Internacional de Literatura y Cultura Femenina Hispanica
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 Uncivilized Remembrance in Luisa Valenzuela's
La travesia

Nancy J. Gates Madsen

Lawrence University

Buenos Aires, 1977. As the author leaves the Mexicanembassy, she

becomes convinced that she is being followed. Having spent the evening

listening to the testimony of several asylum seekers, on the way home she
notices her body respond to the experience with a mixture of fear and

euphoria. Making her way through the apparently empty streets of her
neighborhood, she finds herself unconsciously trying to shake off any
followers and shield her body from an imagined bullet from the rooftops,

yet at the same time she feels inexplicably alive and happy. Reflecting
on the experience later, the author, Luisa Valenzuela, can find only one

explanation: "Me siento—en ese momento me senti—feliz porque estaba

escribiendocon el cuerpo. Una forma de escritura que solo puede perdurar

en la memoria de los poros" ("Escribir" 120).
La memoria de los poros represents a somatic imprint that remains
on the subcutaneous level, if not the subconscious, and implies a type of

understanding that exists beyond or apart from the intellect. In "Escribir

con el cuerpo," Valenzuela suggests a relationship between this corporeal

Nancy Gates Madsen holds a PhD in Spanish from the University of Wisconsin-Madi
son. Her research interests include Latin American women writers, cultural and gender
studies, and the legacies of authoritarianism. She has published essays on sites of memory
in Buenos Aires in The Art of Truth-Telling about Authoritarian Rule, and she is the co
translator, with Kristin Dykstra, of Violet Island and Other Poems, a bilingual anthology
of the poetry of Reina Maria Rodriguez. She currently teaches at Lawrence University.

I am grateful to the anonymous readers of Letras Femeninas and to Linda Winston for
comments that helped shaped this final version.

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100 Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2

memory and the culture of fear cultivated during the most recent military
dictatorship in Argentina. Yet while the scarred bodies of torture vic
tims bear an obvious physical reminder of the dark years from 1976-83,
somatic memory is not limited to those who experienced the state terror

directly. Citizens who witnessed the violence in a more indirect fashion

also remain marked by the experience, as Shoshana Felman and Dori
Laub explain in their excellent study, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in
Literature, Psychoanalysis and History. The authors challenge traditional
notions about the act of bearing witness, in which someone views an
occurrence and later provides an uncomplicated version of events. For
Felman and Laub, the process is never so naively simple; for both the
nature of the event and the character of the witness serve to shape the

experience and determine the telling. The authors emphasize the acci
dental yet persistent nature of bearing witness and giving testimony:

If it is the accident [the event] that pursues the witness, it is the

compulsive character of testimony which is brought into relief: the
witness is "pursued," that is, at once compelled and bound by what,
in the unexpected impact of the accident, is both incomprehensible
and unforgettable. The accident does not let go: it is an accident from
which the witness can no longer free himself. (23)

This accidental nature of witnessing includes not only those who were
caught up in an experience directly (death camp survivors, former torture
victims) but also those who experienced the horror only peripherally
(those who lived near the clandestine camps or mass grave sites or who
saw someone being taken from their home or off the street). Furthermore,
it allows for witnesses who were not fully aware of what they were seeing
at the time but who still feel in some sense "pursued" by the past, such as
the protagonist of La travesia, the latest novel by Luisa Valenzuela.
La travesia tells the story of an Argentine anthropologist living in
New York City who finds herself confronted with a secret past she had

hoped to forget: her brief marriage to Professor Facundo Zuberbtihler

and corresponding "epistolar prostitution," whereby she detailed ficti
tious sexual encounters to him in exchange for plane tickets to foreign
destinations where she carried out field research. When the letters unex

pectedly find their way back to her, she is forced to acknowledge this
suppressed personal history, as well as its relationship to the violence in
her country. Tracing the protagonist's internal journey toward accep

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Gates Madsen 101

tance of her past, the novel emphasizes both the corporeal and organic
nature of memory: repressed memories take root inside the body and
grow into a tangled emotional wilderness. Furthermore, with an ironic
wink toward Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's foundational text of the

Argentine nation, Valenzuela situates the anthropologist's struggle for

remembrance within the familiar paradigm of civilization y barbarie,
as the protagonist can only begin to bear witness to her difficult past by

recognizing and embracing the barbarous (feminine) qualities of her

interior geography of memory.
The novel opens with a carefully scripted "accident," a blind date.
The as-yet unnamed protagonist participates in a mysterious drama in
MoMA in order to guide a man to his encounter with the dominatrix Ava
Taurel. An anthropologist by trade, "adiestrada para estudiar conductas

ajenas, no la propia" (15), she thinks of her participation as a window

into the world of those who seek excitement in the unknown, the vaguely

threatening. Charged with leaving a briefcase for the man to pick up,
meeting him in one of the galleries, and passing along a message about
how to find Ava, the protagonist finds herself becoming more involved in
the little drama than she had anticipated. For rather than simply transmit
Ava's instructions, she ends up improvising a message, warning the man
that "no solo el hecho de mirar para atras hiere, a veces tambien hiere

aquello que se ve" (24). Afterwards, eager to free herself from the experi
ence, because the clandestine encounter and knowledge of Ava Taurel's
tastes could not help but conjure up uncomfortable resonances with her
recent past, she soon realizes that "no habia terminado, no:
country's
estaba por empezar recien. Debia encarar ahora su propia cita a ciegas
con la parte ignorada de si que la habia metido precisamente en esa loca
historia" (25). The protagonist's accidental (and unacknowledged) wit

nessing of the dictatorship in Argentina begins to pursue her as a result of

her participation in this accidental encounter in MoMA, and she realizes
she must not only come face-to-face with the wounds from the past but
also risk being wounded in the process.1
One of the more compelling images from this opening scene

(appropriately titled "Navegacion a ciegas") is that of the briefcase itself.

Although she arrives at the museum early and has plenty of time to con
sider its contents, the protagonist never feels tempted to peek inside (15).
The briefcase itself calls to mind the found object in the title story from

Aqui pasan cosas raras, which provokes excited curiosity soon followed

by desperate fear. In the context of state terror, a mysterious briefcase can

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102 Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2

easily become an object of revulsion, yet in this instance, in New York

City, years after the return to democracy in Argentina, the absolute lack
of curiosity on the part of the protagonist is curious in itself. It is as if she
knows she holds a Pandora's box of past secrets, repressed memories and

unacknowledged emotions, and resolves not to open it at any cost.

In Remembering Pinochet's Chile: On the Eve of London 1998, the
historian Steve Stern uses the image of a "memory box" to describe the
manner in which Chileans today recall the Pinochet years. This box "con
tains several competing scripted albums, each of them works in progress
that seek to define and give shape to a crucial turning point in life, much
like a family album may script a wedding or a birth, an illness or a death"
(xxviii). For some, the memory of the crucial years of the dictatorship is
like a "closed box," too painful or dangerous to be considered directly;
for others, memory remains an "unresolved rupture" or open wound,

devastating in all its presence and impossible to forget (105-113). All

these "emblematic memories" combine together in the memory box to
provide a complete, albeit contradictory, portrait of the meaning of the
Pinochet years.

Acknowledging the differences between the Chilean and Argentine

dictatorships, much of Stern's theory about how the legacies of authori
tarianism manifest themselves in memory applies to Argentina as well.

Regarding the protagonist of La travesia, the closed briefcase, like the

closed box, aptly describes how she carries her memories of her homeland.
Until her participation in Ava's little drama, the anthropologist was very
successful in guarding the secrets of her past, both consciously (actively

suppressing any thought or mention of her secret ex-husband, Facundo)

and unconsciously (never questioning the fate of her disappeared school
friend, luancho). The narrator states, "A ella el pasado le ocupa apenas
el tiempo de una rememoracion molesta" (60)—the protagonist lives
firmly rooted in the present. Her friends in New York know nothing
of her ex-husband's and she even kept her relationship secret
existence,
from her family and friends in Argentina. Nevertheless, while she resists
the impulse to peek inside the briefcase while in the museum, her mere

participation in the game as a supposedly dispassionate observer becomes

a blind date with destiny, and the memories from inside her personal

memory box begin to spill forth unwanted. Unable to keep the wounds of
the past safely locked away, the protagonist must confront the emerging

questions about her participation in the drama: "^Acaso se siente libre?

[. . .] ^no sera un resabio de epocas menos lucidas? Son preguntas que

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Gates Madsen 103

ya le empiezan a latir con vida propia si bien ella aun no puede formu
larselas" (29). As evidenced by the use of the word "latir," these pulsating

questions seem to comprise an integral part of her physical self. Like a

beating heart, la memoria de los poros not only lives inside the body but
also forms part of that living body, thus providing an ever-present and
insistent call to witness the trauma of the past. Indeed, just as the unac

knowledged event pursues the witness, these barely formulated questions

begin to haunt the protagonist.
But the questions that spontaneously arise out of her subconscious
mark only one aspect of the past that pursues her. The artist Bolek

Greczynski presents her with a more material reminder of her repressed

personal history when he reveals that he has acquired possession of the
erotic letters she wrote to her secret ex-husband, Facundo. Discovered

inadvertently when Bolek entered her former apartment in Buenos Aires

to recover a banner for his exhibition that had fallen onto her balcony,
these letters denote another manner in which the protagonist's repressed

past pursues her. Ksenija Bilbija illustrates the unrelenting nature of let
ters in "Poniendo las cartas boca abajo: La travesia de Luisa Valenzuela."

Using as a point of departure Lacan's assertion that "a letter always arrives
"
at its destination," Bilbija explains that [e] 1 destinatario es perseguido

por el espectro engendrado en otro tiempo, por los deseos a veces nunca
tocados por la conciencia, traviesos deseos que navegan ortografias de
la memoria" (84; emphasis mine). Bilbija suggests that the protagonist
is the true recipient of the letters, rather than the stated one, and in the
spirit of Lacan's statement, the anthropologist is literally pursued by the
letters, for Bolek brings them back into her life and forces her to address
them in all their physical reality.
The letters in La travesia represent more than the protagonist's
shameful private history, for their discovery in what Bolek refers to as "la
extrana capital mundial del desaparecido" (94) suggests a relationship to
the broader events of the dictatorship. Tinged with blood, the letters bear
the physical marks of violence, and Bolek—also an exile from a country
that suffered a violent past—inevitably concludes that he must have
stumbled into the apartment of one of the dictatorship's many victims.
But while the protagonist, through her world travels, lived the "cover

story" given to so many friends and family members attempting to locate

their missing loved ones, the very story Facundo gave her as an explana
tion for Juancho's disappearance, she herself was not "disappeared."2
The relationship between her situation and disappearance, between the

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104 Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2

letters and political violence, remains coincidental but suggestive, and

the fact that her world travels coincide with the escalating violence in

Argentina implies that the forgotten letters also represent the failed or
unacknowledged witnessing of the terror in her home country.
When Bolek first mentions the building where he held his exhibit
in Buenos Aires in 1982 and made his startling discovery of the letters,
the protagonist feels "un sobresalto tan pero tan profundo que ni logro

registrarlo en el momento; su sismografo interno parecia estar descom

puesto la mayor parte del tiempo en aquel entonces" (36). This image of
an internal seismograph proves very appropriate to describe the somatic

imprint of every experience, the impact of which may not be immediately

felt. As Valenzuela has affirmed in "Siete aproximaciones al secreto," "El
Secreto mora mas pegado a la piel que a la ropa" (91); in other words,

although the protagonist may have erased the vestiges of her marriage and
her past on the surface, la memoria de los poros still lingers deep inside
the body. Measuring Bolek's words with a seismograph also likens the
internal rumblings of memory to a natural event of great proportion and

lasting effect, thus foregrounding the organic quality of these memories

embedded inside the body. Like shock waves that can travel around the
world hours and even days after a seismic rumble, the ripples of Bolek's
revelation take effect after the artist leaves. The protagonist translates
the internal quaking into external movement, letting her feet guide her

through the city in an unconscious attempt to "dibujar el mapa de un

territorio desconocido: su propia memoria" (39), an indication that in
order to recognize and understand the memoria de los poros, one must
follow an internal trail along the body's emotional geography.
Elina Matoso explores the internal geography of memory in her work
El cuerpo, territorio escenico. As part of a practice to help patients over
come corporeal issues, Matoso envisions the body as a terrain that can
be mapped geographically and that provides a key to understanding the

images or masks that humans wear as part of their essential identities.

She explains that we all possess a corporeal image of ourselves, "el Mapa
Fantasmatico Corporal," which changes depending on each person's
conception of his or her body and self (15). Just as the protagonist in La
travesia carries the shadow of her past inside her, all humans experience
moments when "se filtran en el cuerpo las sombras, los fantasmas, los
duendes que el libro de anatomia no testimonia" (18). Remarking on the

large number of natural metaphors used to describe the body and its func
tions—"cataratas, arenas en el rinon, 'corriente' sanguinea, llorar a mares"

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Gates Madsen 105

(40)—Matoso further asserts that the internal markings of identity bear

geographical terms, a suggestive claim in light of the connection drawn

between memory, the body, and nature in La travesia.
Considering the fact that the majority of the novel's action takes place
in the urban centers of New York City and Buenos Aires, the narrative

employs a vast number of natural images, especially when describing

the protagonist's inner self and the nature of memory. At one point the

territory of her memory is compared to "arenas movedizas" (141); in

another instance the central character refers to her innermost secrets as
"cosaspropias y profundas que crecen recubiertas por capas y capas de
musgo" (81). Yet by far, one of the most significant links between nature
and memory appears when the protagonist ponders how to delve into
and examine her own internal nature, for she employs a lengthy organic

metaphor to describe the process:

Es mas bien metiendose de cabeza en la imaginacion, solo saliendo de

a ratos a respirar por las zonas de aire de la llamada realidad, para des

pues de nuevo sumergirse en las cavernas submarinas reconociendo

cardumenes fosforescentes y enfrentando los monstruos impensados,
aterradores.Dejarse llevar por la invencion para lograr meterse en la
aguas mas profundas—piensa—alii en las insondables honduras del
Walden Pond propio, en los volcanes oceanicos de la mente donde
prodigiosos gusanos y larvas gigantisimas viven gracias a las emana
ciones de azufre de un magma visceral desconocido. (79)

Submerged caves, incalculable depths, and oceanic volcanoes with giant

worms and larvae all combine to create this startling image of her inte
rior world, her internal geography. The image of memory as a volcano
seems especially appropriate, something that can lie dormant for years
before suddenly announcing its existence with ferocity and disrupting
the apparent calm of the surface.

Delving into the interior wilderness of her memory requires con

fronting the grotesque beings of her innermost thoughts, and the process
proves both complex and disturbing. As Matoso explains, "Aproximarse
al cuerpo no es un recorrido unidireccional ni facil; su complejidad nos
remite siempre a un enigma. Atemperarlo es calido y tranquilizador,
desenmascararlo puede ser cruel y desgarrante. Ocultarlo, esconderlo,
negarlo es quedar atrapado en el propio cuerpo, sin poder ver el enigma
que lo contiene" (104). Indeed, the protagonist's struggles to ignore and

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106 Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2

suppress her inner mysteries reveal the uncomfortable effects of keeping

potentially disturbing memories trapped inside the body, as seemingly
innocent conversations tinged with organic imagery often trigger emo
tional responses. Returning from a party, she finds herself in the middle
of a conversation about lettuce, and this apparently innocuous natural

image propels her thoughts inexorably to Facundo and her secret past.
She notes, "Tanto hay en ella que reclama ser lavado y ahora se deja dis
traer, enfureciendose, cuando sin la menor maldad se habla de lavar la
vil lechuguita" (115). Referring to another natural image, she comments
on how she appears to have struck "la punta del verde iceberg de lechuga.
Tanta protesta tragada le infla el estomago, le sale en eructos, es una pro
testa disfrazada de aire siseante, silbante, hissing. [...] Pero se contiene,
suspira, bosteza, y calla" (113). The natural gases that attempt to escape
through her mouth seem to originate from the internal volcanoes, yet in
this case, much the opposite of Valenzuela's heroine in "La densidad de
las palabras," who speaks the bitter truth in the form of frogs and snakes

emerging from her mouth, the protagonist struggles to keep the worms
and larvae of memory imprisoned inside.
The interplay of natural and corporeal images to describe the interior
wilderness of the protagonist in La travesia draws a clear connection
among nature, the body, and memory. Unacknowledged memories embed
themselves in the body and form the landmarks of the central character's
interior geography. Furthermore, by emphasizing both the organic and
somatic quality of memory, Valenzuela's text challenges two existing
discourses employed in times of authoritarian rule: first, the relationship
between nature and culture manifested in Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's
Facundo: Civilizationy barbarie (including the related association between
the untamed wilderness and the feminine); and second, the Cartesian
division betweenthe body and the mind emphasized in the military's
rhetoric during the most recent years of state terror.
The novel characterizes the protagonist's struggle for remembrance
as a battle to impose civilized notions upon her unruly, wild
memory. For
example, after Bolek triggers the protagonist's internal seismograph with
his startling revelation regarding the location of his exhibit in Buenos
Aires, he inadvertently leaves behind an additional "organic" reminder
of his visit. When he stands up to say
goodnight, a red stain left on the
upholstery reveals that a pen has bled through his pants. Like the pulsat
ing questions that haunted the protagonist's participation in Ava's drama,
the "bleeding" couch stands as a symbol of the
as-yet-unacknowledged

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Gates Madsen 107

wounds of the past. Remembering the incident later, the protagonist

struggles to "sumergirse en esa nada, nadando en el recuerdo de una

anecdota, de una mancha tan pero tan vibrante y roja roja que ni siquiera
parece marca de sangre, como otras" (38). Denying its resemblance to
blood merely invites the comparison, and both the accidental nature of
the mark and its organic quality suggest the wild, uncontrolled nature
of traumatic memory, a wildness the protagonist is unwilling to accept
at this point in her journey. After a moment of indecision, she quickly
determines that Bolek should sign the stain, thus converting the accidental
mark into a work of art and thereby imposing a civilizing force over the
ominous red stain.
The anthropologist's intense desire to exert a civilizing influence
on her wild memory invites a comparison with Sarmiento's Facundo,
which explains Argentina's character in terms of a fierce battle between

European civilization and savage barbarism. Valenzuela's decision to

name the protagonist's ex-husband Facundo further links the individual,

private history embodied in the character's secret marriage to the broader

social events of the dictatorship and the imagining of the entire nation.
The opening line of Sarmiento's work, "Sombra terrible de Facundo, voy
a evocarte para que expliques la vida secreta y las convulsiones internas
que desgarran las entranas de un noble pueblo," echoes the struggle of the
fictional anthropologist, whose personal examination of the "sombra" of
her ex-husband helps her understand not only her own "vida secreta" but
that of her country during the 1970s and 1980s. But while Sarmiento's text
makes it clear that the refined civilization enjoyed in the urban centers
of Argentina has been cruelly corrupted by the savage influences of the
interior provinces, La travesia responds to the urban barbarism of state
terror and reveals the dangers of attempting to impose artificial control
over an interior wilderness that refuses to be tamed.
The trope of civilizacion y barbarie in Facundo has received much
critical attention and requires only a brief summary. Using the life of

gaucho bandit Facundo Quiroga as a foil for the Rosas dictatorship,

Sarmiento explicit the connection between the bloody barba
makes
rism of Rosas and the untamed wilderness. "Savage Indians" threaten
livestock and populations, while the wealth of natural resources, such
as the abundance of navigable rivers, await exploitation of all their rich

potential. According to Sarmiento, Buenos Aires would have the capacity

to extend its civilizing influence on the interior were it not for the way in
which Rosas has stifled culture in the cities. The author further explains

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108 Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2

that any type of national literature will result from "la descripcion de las

grandiosas escenas naturales, y sobre todo de la lucha entre la civilizacion

europea y la barbarie indigena, entre la inteligencia y la materia" (89).
In a suggestive thematic coincidence, a travesia itself figures promi

nently as one of the central natural settings of Sarmiento's text and serves
to introduce the title character. The author sets the scene with the fol

lowing description: "Media entre las ciudades de San Juan y San Luis un
dilatado desierto que, por su falta completa de agua, recibe el nombre
de travesia. El aspecto de aquellas soledades es, por lo general, triste y

desamparado" (91). This barren landscape serves as a place of refuge for

bandits running from the law, in this case Facundo Quiroga. Only the
very strong make it across the travesia alive, and the lonely desert scene
highlights not only the gaucho's comfort in the wild (he successfully
survives an attack from a man-eating tiger) but also the vast expanse of
untamed wilderness in the interior provinces of the country.
One final aspect of Sarmiento's text bears consideration in relation
to La travesia: the way in which the author constructs a metaphorical
relationship between woman and the wilderness. Dinorah Cortes-Velez
has explored how Sarmiento effectively feminizes the nation of Argentina
in "Deseo patriarcal, deseo fundacional: La paternidad literaria como
metafora en Facundo de Domingo Faustino Sarmiento." She notes how
the author describes the nation of Argentina as a desirable woman:

La Republica Argentina es hoy la seccion hispanoamericana que en sus

manifestaciones exteriores ha llamado preferentemente la atencion
de las naciones europeas, que no pocas veces se han visto envueltas
en sus extravios, o atraidas, como una a acercarse al
por voragine,
centro en que remolinean elementos tan contrarios. (392-93)

Sarmiento's lament that "[. . .] a la Republica Argentina sobre todo, le

ha hecho falta un Tocqueville que, premunido del conocimiento de las
teorias sociales [. . .] viniera a penetrar en el interior de nuestra vida

politica como en un campo vastisimo y aun no explorado" (393), with its

image of penetrating uncharted territory, likens man's superiority over
nature with male domination over the female.3 In keeping with Sandra
Gilbert and Susan Gubar's theory of the patriarchal tradition of writ
ing outlined in The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the
Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, whereby "the text's author is a
father, a progenitor, a procreator, an aesthetic patriarch whose pen is an

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Gates Madsen 109

instrument of generative power like his penis" (6), Cortes-Velez asserts

that in Facundo "la Argentina representa a la mujer a la que Sarmiento
desea impregnar con el semen de la tinta para concebir un nuevo orden
social" (5).4
In La travesia, the "feminine" wilderness of the "interior" is liter

ally interior and feminine, and although the novel ultimately challenges
the notion that this wilderness must be tamed, Valenzuela describes the

protagonist's attempts to control her wild memory in terms that recall

Sarmiento's text. For example, after listening to Bolek's description of
how he discovered her letters, the protagonist compares her dangerous
emotions to the phenomenon of a raging river: "El tumulto de emocio
nes que sintio [. . .] necesita encontrar un cauce, porque ella no puede

seguir viviendo esta ansiedad, como si le faltara el aire" (88). Like the
submerged volcanoes of her memory, these innermost thoughts resemble
a powerful natural force in need of some form of mastery, reminiscent
of Sarmiento's call to dominate Argentina's natural resources in order to
become nation. In another telling passage, the anthropologist
a civilized

ponders the organic character of memory:

Crecen como los hongos, a veces tambien los recuerdos, la

hongos
memoria. Que puede ser venenosa amenaza si una no logra cavar
hasta el fondo. Ella lo sospecha. Lo sabe. Preferiria si pudiera elegir

apartarse de todo confuso enmaranado bosque y transitar el abulico,

desvitalizado sotano donde crecen los hongos cultivados. (67)

In this instance, the contrast between the tangled forest and the "devi
talized" (civilized) underground room clearly situates the protagonist's
struggle to dominate her interior wilderness within Sarmiento's familiar
paradigm.
Moreover, her initial notions of memory are characterized by their
artificial or civilized quality. She first considers Giulio Camillo's "Teatro
de la Memoria which consists of (memory) boxes that open
del Mundo,"
and close to offer a "recoleccion total y una posibilidad de entenderlo todo

por asociacion para transmitirlo en palabras brillantes con el brillo de la

verdad, palabras que producian efectos magicos" (30). While the defining
characteristic of the "Teatro" is its ability to incorporate everything into
its encapsulated memory, the protagonist's ideal image of memory, the
"Maquina de la Memoria," affords complete control over which memories

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110 Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2

are saved and when (or if) they are remembered. This machine gives users
the option to manipulate their memory however they choose:

O bien borrarla, o incentivarla, o despertar recuerdos latentes, o hacer

un archivo solo de los momentos agradables y ya casi olvidados, o

depositar en la maquina un grupo de recuerdos molestos para volver

a ellos cuando ya no pudieran lastimarnos o humillarnos. La cuestion
era preguntarle a cada uno de los participates como trataria a su
memoria y que cosa le pediria a la maquina. (68-69)

Such a device offers awesomepower to those who feel in some way per
secuted (or pursued) by memory, for it allows the user to decide when
and how memory will be preserved and used. No wild mushrooms grow
unbidden in the "Maquina de la Memoria," only their civilized counter
parts in carefully cultivated beds.
While the protagonist's struggle to contain her interior wilderness
echoes Sarmiento's exhortation to tame the interior provinces, a closer

comparison of the two characters who share the name Facundo points to
the second discourse Valenzuela challenges in La travesia: the hierarchi
cal relationship between the body and the mind. The first name of the
protagonist's professor links him with the gaucho bandit; nevertheless,
his last name, Zuberbiihler, suggests German origins and a different type
of modern horror. And while Valenzuela's Facundo, like Sarmiento's, is
characterized by his unquestionable authority—for example, restricting
the protagonist's movements unless he can monitor them: "Eso repetia
Facundo, y era una orden" (87)—Zuberbiihler ultimately proves very dif
ferent from Sarmiento's bloodthirsty figure who terrorized the Argentine
populace. Sarmientodescribes the significance of the red flag planted by
Facundo after his victories as "el sfmbolo que expresa violencia, sangre y
barbarie" (193). Facundo Zuberbiihler, in contrast, exhibits an absolute
disgust with blood, especially that associated with natural processes such
as menstruation. His abhorrence runs so deep that rather than share

any sexual relations with the virginal protagonist, he exhorts her to find
someone else with whom to share this messy experience before returning
to him. For the professor, her blood provokes more revulsion than the
blood shed in the practices of state terror, even though the novel implies
his connection with the regime. Through such emphasis on its feminine

quality, Valenzuela reveals a more intimate and organic meaning of the

natural fluid that for Sarmiento only represents violence and chaos.

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Gates Madsen 111

One must note that FacundoZuberbtihler describes his personal

abhorrence for menstrual blood "como si su asco fuera universal y acep
tado por todos" (57), and in this sense he adheres to a larger discourse
that regards the woman's body as somehow unclean. As Sherry Ortner
to Male
explains in her insightful examination of the question "Is Female
as Nature is to Culture?" women are perceived as being more in tune
with their bodies due to their reproductive role, and this association with
the body adds to women's debased status in society. Susan Griffin also
alludes to the negative perception of the female body, in particular the
Her: "At
reproductive organs, in Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside
the gate of her womb is a wound which bleeds freely. It is a wound that
will never heal. She is mutilated. She is damaged" (85). The professor's
thus situates his
generalization of his personal phobia to society at large
views within an existing paradigm that considers woman and the body
to occupy a debased position.
So far removed from natural processes, bodily functions, or passions,
Zuberbtihler appears purely intellectual. Gwendolyn Diaz notes Facundo's
lack of corporeal desire in "Una odisea hacia el caos: La travesia de Luisa
Valenzuela," contrasting him with another character in the novel, the
protagonist's lover Joe: "Su relacion con [Joe] es deseo puro, deseo fisico

y corporal, no de palabra (como Facundo) sino de cuerpo" (76). In fact,

the majority of the professor's intimate encounters with the protagonist
exist only in the realm of discourse: "Facundo en una punta del cuarto y
recurrir al tacto, al olfato,
yo en la otra nos deciamos cosas de lujuria sin
al gusto" (192); in short, "Facundo no comprobaria con sus cinco senti
dos, tan solo con su oido" (192). A sharp contrast to Sarmiento's gaucho
bandit, dominated by his passions and seemingly unencumbered with
rational thought, Professor Zuberbtihler is the epitome of Rational Man,
unhindered by emotional distractions as he dispassionately listens to the
protagonist's tales of her sexual encounters—what they share is literally
"sexo oral," or, as the protagonist terms it, "Verba, non res" (86).
denial of the physical self calls to mind the way the mili
Facundo's
to control the unruly
tary government during the dictatorship attempted
body. Practices of kidnapping, torture, and disappearance demonstrated a
of individual and collective
widespread attempt to restrict the functioning
bodies, and torture in particular aimed to exercise complete domination
over an uncooperative or "subversive" body. Elaine Scarry makes evident
how torture reduces the victim to pure corporeality in The Body in Pain:
The Making and Unmaking of the World. Emphasizing torture's effects

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112 Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2

on the victims body and voice, she asserts, "The goal of the torturer is to
make the one, the body, emphatically and crushingly present by destroy

ing it, and to make the other, the voice, absent by destroying it" (49). The
military even employed the metaphor of a diseased body to describe the
spread of subversion and to justify the extreme violence.5 Thus, not only
was control over bodies practiced in a literal fashion through the sys
tematic practice of disappearance, but the metaphorical terms in which
the military defined their actions centered around control of disorderly

organic processes.
The protagonist's attempts to control her wild memory also respond
to this mind/body division—somatic memory can only be suppressed
through denying the body. For example, during Hurricane Candy, the
protagonist attempts to remain cut off from her senses in a futile attempt
to ignore the internal rumblings of memory. As she listens to a message
from Ava on her answering machine (a different type of Maquina de la
Memoria), she literally takes cover from nature and from her life: "Nada
voy a ver, no me digas nada mas, no quiero ver nada, fin de Ava y sus
historietas, le contesta ella a la maquina. Y una vez en la cama se tapa la
cabeza con la almohada de plumas y trata de no oir el viento que sopla
desaforado" (61-62). Unwilling to listen to the wild howling of the wind,
she dreams of entering into the eye of the storm, where "reina la calma
y el silencio mas absoluto. Alii no hay tormenta ni hay nada, es como
la muerte, piensa" (62). Akin to her professor's denial of the body, the
protagonist's desire to escape from her senses, from nature, and enter into
a realm of absolute silence (absence of sensation, of thought, of memory)

similarly aims to master the physical self.

The clear hierarchy in Sarmiento's text of culture as superior to nature
and the military's discourse that devalues the body reflect the traditional

interpretation of nature and the body (especially the female body) as

debased concepts. Yet in La travesia the protagonist's attempts to tame
the wild mushrooms of memory prove useless—her repressed memories
of the dictatorship, of Facundo, of the letters, continue to rise unbidden
from the depths of her "Walden Pond interno" (79). And in accordance
with Thoreau's view of nature as a place for self-discovery and spiritual

enlightenment, the protagonist's internal wilderness resists "civilizing"

efforts. The somatic memory held in the body refuses subordinance to the
mind, and ultimately Valenzuela's text questions the traditional hierarchy
of culture over nature, mind over body. In fact, the body (in particular,
the female body) and nature, far from being devalued concepts, represent

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Gates Madsen 113

the key to the protagonist's eventual acknowledgment of her memory and

the recuperation of her life.

Attempts to dominate her interior wilderness or suppress the somatic

imprint of the past prove impossible precisely because the body, nature,
and memory are inextricably linked, and even the wild or disturbing
elements of the self form a necessary and integral part of one's identity.
As Matoso explains, a quick self-examination of one's internal geogra

phy "ahonda lo extrano, busca el personaje, la mascara, el gesto que lo

expresa, las escenas que lo contienen, y va desenmascarando al extrano,
se le ve la mascara, el rostro, la mirada" (102). At one point in La trave
sia, the protagonist recalls an ethnographic informant who claimed he
felt "naked" without a mask, prompting the following reflection from
the anthropologist: "Mi cuerpo es mi mascara. No puedo quitarmelo,

aqui esta—estamos—pegados para siempre, y para siempre flaqueando"

(288). This idea of carrying hidden identities inside mirrors Matoso's

theory, for she states that we compose our corporeal images "desde los
miles de rostros, desde los enmascaramientos y desenmascaramientos
sucesivos" (191). The protagonist of La travesia lives with this fractured,
masked identity in her attempt to suppress her past; on the surface she

plays the part of the dispassionate anthropological observer, but inside

she carries the hidden identities of secret wife and secret writer of erotic
encounters.

The protagonist can only escape the seemingly endless cycle of

memories springing forth from inside her body by recognizing and

embracing, rather than ignoring or suppressing, her internal wild nature.

Matoso emphasizes that the ultimate goal is not to rid oneself of the

stranger within, for "[l]o extrano es inherente a lo humano" (102), and

that in ridding the self of one unfamiliar element, one only risks reveal

ing another:"Debajo de cada mascara hay otra mascara, al levantar una

escena otra escena, al desenmascarar un extrano encuentro otro
aparece

y otro y otro" (104). In the case of La travesia, Diaz draws a comparison

between the protagonist's fractured identity and the collages of Dadaist

painter and sculptor Kurt Schwitters invoked at various points during

the novel, arguing that the protagonist must recognize and embrace her
dark past to reincorporate herself as a whole person (77—78).
La travesia hails the body as the source of knowledge and memory,
but never
exemplified by the final letter the protagonist wrote to Facundo
sent. Reminiscent of the thesis she wrote for her professor, "Los ritos de

sangre," which examined beliefs held by different cultures regarding

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114 Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2

the purity or impurity of the onset of menarche, the letter relates a tale
of pleasure in which the central character's menstrual blood plays an

integral role in an erotic ritual. Far from being a source of disgust for
her lover(s), in this tale the blood that flows from her womb embodies
life—-"Nosotros, con la sangre de la mujer, sembramos," explains one
of the participants in the ritual (274). Diaz emphasizes the importance
of the positive, creative value assigned to blood in the tale, especially in
contrast to the violent history of the dictatorship, and concludes that "en
su trayectoria vital, la protagonista ha aprendido a reconciliar el pasado

sangriento con un nuevo orden en que la sangre se convierte en creacion"

(80), but it is also important to note that the positive connotations arise
from its uniquely feminine quality. The blood that represents creation

originates in the female body, and the letter serves to break down the
dualism that debases women for their relationship to the body.6 Far from
a damaged, wounded object in need of control or domination, the female

body is celebrated as a source of erotic pleasure in all its messy glory, and
the protagonist's appreciation of the final letter's poetic value represents
her acceptance of her suppressed identity and desires.7
The protagonist's acceptance of lo extrano that lives inside her proves
essential to her recovery, as does the recognition that her interior wilder
ness will not and should not be tamed. For the ultimate goal is not to
dominate or master disturbing emotions but to acknowledge them and
arrive at a point where, echoing Paul van Zyl, the executive secretary for
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, "the past
won't haunt you on its own terms, rather than your own." The protago
nist repeatedly finds herself caught in a position where her unconscious
internal wilderness refuses to bow to the "civilizing" influence of her
conscious mind; she can only move forward by finally passing through
this figurative and literal wilderness. It seems no accident that her
cathartic moment in the novel comes while visiting her sculptor friend,

Raquel Rabinovich, in upstate New York. The artist's work in this natural
space—rocks emerging from the earth, moving between the visible and
invisible world—is an ideal metaphor for the processes the protagonist
has been experiencing throughout the novel. The protagonist too has
been moving between these two worlds, the visible world of her conscious

thoughts—attempts to keep her past locked away, safe, forgotten—and

the unconscious organic reactions in her body inspired by the memory
of Facundo, the letters, and her country's bloody past.

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Gates Madsen 115

Far removed from the "civilizing" influences of New York City, in the
"Morada del Oso," she has an incredible dream about a fierce storm. The
next day she goes to the local bakery and is greeted by two indigenous
characters, Rain Deer and Ida, who recognize that she has had a vision
and invite her to stay and talk about what she has seen. While Sarmiento
condemns the indigenous population of Argentina as part of the barba
rous wilderness in need of domination, Rain Deer and Ida's connection
with nature is precisely what allows them to understand both the visible
and invisible worlds. Rain Deer explains the indigenous way of looking
at the world, which provides a key to the protagonist's journey of self

discovery: "Hay que verlo dos veces, le dijo, de frente y con el rabillo del
ojo, ver el muy definido mundo de la claridad y el mundo de las huidizas
sombras" (340). Outside the confines of the city, the protagonist becomes
more attuned to this sideways manner of seeing. Rather than immediately

trying to contain and control the shadows of this indirect vision, she is
able to accept what it might reveal, in recognition of Matoso's assertion
that "esta fusion entre lo humano y la naturaleza reviste de identidad lo
humano" (43).
This different way of seeing responds to a natural, rather than arti
ficial, order of things, and it affects her interactions with Rain Deer and
Ida. Unable to render the poetic manner in which the indigenous man

expresses himself, she comments that his words are "imposibles de repro
ducir" (340). Gone is the academic observer whose role is to duplicate the
words "verbatim y despojarlas de esencia" (340). She has entered into a
different way of seeing, understanding now that she must accept all her

thoughts: "Juntar entonces las dudas, apilarlas e intentar instalarse con

comodidad entre las dudas como en un nido. Ver el mundo dos veces.
Simultaneamente" (340-41). Without the need to suppress her thoughts,
doubts can enter unbidden into her mind, like the wild mushrooms

creeping through the interstices of her brain.

She spends three days with Rain Deer and Ida, calmly helping with
the process of baking bread, and again, the natural, organic images stand
out in her description of the experience. The three elements of fire, water,
and air combine in the baking process, while Rain Deer himself "parece
formar parte del paisaje" (348). The protagonist compares him to a cata

lyst, the yeast that allows the bread to rise and take shape, and indeed, the
time she spends with these two indigenous guides propels her to take the
next essential step toward recognizing her internal wilderness: moving
through an external one.

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116 Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2

Resolved to stop running away from the past that pursues her relent

lessly, the protagonist "decide por primera vez internarse en la zona del
bosque donde no hay ni camino ni serial indicadora alguna" (353). No
longer following the paths of others, she begins hiking through the woods
on her own, well aware that there are no trails to follow even if she should
so desire. Setting her own course, she attempts to return to the place
where she started, yet "solo logra hundirse mas y mas en el bosque" (354).
A return to her previous state proves impossible (this journey, like the
woman who inspired it, is an "Ida" rather than a "Vuelta"), and any hope
of following others is also lost, for "[c]ada huella que cree encontrar se

interrumpe y la deja mas perdida que antes" (354). Exhausted by hiking

and the panic that begins to set in as the sun goes down and she cannot
find her way, she finally decides to simply sit down and think, recognizing
her own vulnerability that she has struggled to avoid for so many years.
In the climactic moment when she realizes her true nature, the narration

changes from third to first person, a shift that reflects the protagonist's
movement from observer to participant. As her world shrinks around
her, leaving everything exterior behind, she meditates, "Empiezo a entre
ver multiples ojos a mi alrededor en la penumbra de mi bosque interior
[. . .] Son animales puro ojo, pura boca salivando de hambre por mi"
(355). These animal eyes that seem to penetrate her allow her to arrive
at a great realization: "he andado por el mundo con tanto miedo de que
me quieran comer quienes me quieren, ahora debo dejarme comer por
estos seres que me quieren comer" (356). Determined to give herself up
to these ravenous beings, to allow the events that have been pursuing her
for so many years to catch her at last, she admits, "Esa soy yo. Un puro
corazon latente, sin antifaz alguno" (356). Finally able to free herself of
the burden of so many unacknowledged masks in her interior geography,
she is able to break free of the forest as well. Having successfully passed

through the wilderness, she is ready to return to New York City with
her newfound knowledge, stripped of the external masks that concealed
her internal turmoil. Like the territorio escenico of her body, the natural
world asks not for mastery but rather becomes an essential part of her
identity that cannot be denied.
Once again, natural elements play a large role in the final scenes
of the novel. Although the protagonist has returned to the civilized
urban space of the city, she recognizes that "parte de mi ha quedado
en tierra de viboras, a la espera del oso, oliendo a pan recien horneado,
sufriendo una tormenta hecha a medida, dejandome devorar por mons

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Gates Madsen 117

truos interiores" (365). The elemental nature she cultivated during her
stay with Rain Deer and Ida also gains importance. When she first met
them, she described them in terms of the elements, "ellos dos siempre
alii como el agua o el aire" (338). With wind and water spoken for, the

protagonist is left to be the fire element, a role she seems highly suited
for, considering the throbbing passion in her letters and her decision to
destroy them in a blaze of glory as part of Bolek's homage to a former
patient in Creedmoor. In the moments leading up to their ceremonial
destruction, the protagonist's physical progression from the "Campo de
la Naturaleza" room into the "Campo antes de la Batalla" mirrors her

symbolic move from the natural world of upstate New York back to her
personal battle with her past. At the last moment the protagonist rescues
the suitcase containing her letters from the flames, "y sobre su cabeza
llueven sorpresivas ristras de cohetes que ella trata de sacarse de encima
con desesperacion," a further symbolic link with the fire element (390).
In contrast to the briefcase from the opening chapter, a memory box the

protagonist resolved to keep closed, this suitcase of memories no longer

provokes anxious reflection, and when questioned, she freely admits the
contents of the case and their significance.
air, and fire all convey the protagonist to the final chapter
Wind,
"
jTierra!" No longer "navegando a ciegas" as she was at the beginning, she
finds herself rooted in the earth element, fully grounded in her identity,
which is finally revealed: Marcela Osorio. Oso. Rio. Mar. Even her name
embodies the natural world, no longer the debased half of an outmoded
dichotomy but a personal path to remembrance and the recuperation
of her identity. Moving across the travesia of her internal wilderness,
the protagonist finally acknowledges the secrets that haunted her, and

through this recognition comes liberation from the past's power.

The urban barbarity of state terror left a profound and lasting legacy,

marking all those who witnessed the dark years, and as La travesia shows,
the journey toward remembrance proves extraordinarily complex.
Attempts to artificially suppress memories that linger beneath the sur
face fall short because of their somatic nature-—held inside the body, la
memoria de los poros travels along internal pathways in search of expres
sion. Like the wild mushrooms that grow outside the boundaries of neatly
cultivated beds, the imprint of unacknowledged trauma (be it witnessed
or experienced) spreads organically through the body in affirmation of
the intimate relation among nature, memory, and the physical self. Far
from Sarmiento's dire vision of uncontrolled natural forces against which

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118 Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2

man must struggle, La travesia recognizes the harmony between body

and nature and emphasizes the human need to delve into the interior
wilderness of memory. For as Valenzuela reminds us, "Mientras se esta
viva, al cuerpo podemos ponerlo a descansar, pero a la memoria, nunca"
("Escribir" 136).

NOTES

'For a more detailed examination of the role of accident or chance in the

novel, see Gwendolyn Diaz, "Una odisea hacia el caos: La travesia de Luisa

Valenzuela," which explores how the novel exemplifies certain aspects of chaos

theory, in particular how accidents can put into motion a series of changes of

direction or bifurcations that will eventually generate a new order. Diaz traces

the series of incidental bifurcations in La travesia that allow the protagonist to

incorporate her darker side and become whole again, recognizing that "el caos

conlleva en si un nuevo orden" (81).

2In A Lexicon of Terror, Marguerite Feitlowitz describes how the military

government often denied that missing persons were being held in clandestine

camps, instead suggesting that perhaps they were living out of the country. (See
the chapter entitled "A Lexicon of Terror," in particular, p. 28.)
3The association between woman and nature seen in Facundo has a lengthy

history. As Susan Griffin remarks in the preface to Woman and Nature: The

Roaring Inside Her, "Woven everywhere into the tapestry of European art and

literature and seemingly an inseparable part of most philosophical and scien

tific texts—even embedded in the structure of European the

languages—is

assumption that women are closer to nature than men are. The notion is not

intended as a compliment" (ix). In fact, as Carolyn Merchant explains in The

Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution, both Western
and non-Western cultures traditionally imagined nature as feminine, with the

two dominant images being the nurturing mother or wild and uncontrollable

forces such as storms. She explores how the scientific revolution about
brought
the idea of mastery over nature, which naturally included the domination of
women by her less animalistic counterpart, man. In a similar fashion, Sherry
Ortner's seminal article "Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?" examines

more modern conceptions of the relationship, that "culture (still

noting equated

relatively unambiguously with men) recognizes that women are active partici

pants in its special processes, but at the same time sees them as being more rooted

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Gates Madsen

in, or having more direct affinity with nature," a tribute to the permanence of

the nature/culture dualism so prevalent in Western society (73).

4Cortes-Velez's remarks come from an unpublished paper delivered at

the Mid-America Conference on Hispanic Literatures at the University of

Wisconsin-Madison in September 2000.

5In Divine Violence: Spectacle, Psychosexuality,and Radical Christianity in the
Argentine "Dirty War," Frank Graziano notes that Admiral Massera compared
the actions of "subversives" to "plagues that scourged the world" (132). Admiral

Cesar A. Guzzetti was even more explicit when he described how "The social

body of the country is contaminated by a disease that corrodes its insides and

forms antibodies. These antibodies must not be considered in the same way that
one considers a germ. In proportion to the government's control and destruction

of guerrilla warfare, the action of the antibodies is going to disappear" (132-33).

In other words, the military's actions to fight the "plague" of guerrilla warfare

would cease only when they eradicated the invasive virus of "subversion."

6Valenzuela's critique of the hierarchy between body and mind is a recurring

theme in her writing and dates back to her earliest works. Regarding Hay que

sonreir,forexample, Sharon Magnarelli notes in Reflections/Refractions:Reading

Luisa Valenzuela that by speaking through body language, the protagonist Clara

dispels the notion that "[o]nly by conquering or denying the body does one
arrive at the spiritual" (22).
7For an excellent analysis of the letter as a vagina monologue that emphasizes

the integral role of female desire as a source of creative power, essential to the

protagonist's reintegration as a complete person, see Z. Nelly Martinez's "Luisa

Valenzuela's La travesia."

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Cortes-Velez, Dinorah. "Deseo patriarcal, deseo fundacional: La paternidad

literaria como metafora en Facundo de Domingo Faustino Sarmiento."

Mid-America Conference on Hispanic Literatures. Madison, WI. 20

September 2000.

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