"Your blog would be a good place to practice your English," she said.

El matadero Su lectora y su lectura


El matadero is Esteban Echeverría's Argentine allegory por excelencia. This tale that serves as prototype to the South American novel deserves its own numbered definition in the Dictionary of Literary Terms under "civilización vs. barbarie". The irony-rich story takes place during Lent of 1839 in a slaughter yard (matadero). The author's election of this vile and violent setting (the type of setting ignored by his contemporaries) is deliberate and reflects the micro-cosm that is the Argentina of that time - where the white elite, eyes ever on Paris, co-habitate (?) (conviven) with the rough customs of the gauchos, mulattos and blacks who come to the city as service workers. This author avant-la-lettre in so many ways, is perhaps the first to employ language in such a way that the chaotic mix of that society also becomes audible to the reader. In her introduction, Fleming states that, "Pero las formas populares locales y, sobre todo, las expresiones toscas y groseras presentes de hecho en la lengua natural, no tenían aún cabida en la literatura." (81) So true...the rougher language used by el populacho and employed in the most important moments of this relato would still take years to insert itself into literary prose. Echeverría utilizes the previously untapped and extremely valuable narrative potential of the languages of the masses, especially when placed in juxtaposition with the language of the elite. Through it, he characterizes his, um...characters, reflecting the intersticial environments surrounding the stockyard (I knew "slaughteryard", above, didn't sound right!). The presence of a first person narrator, who inserts himself in and whose involvement with the story is unclear, places Echeverría firmly in the grand tradition of Spanish American literature. However, it must be noted that in the opening sentence (¡finally!) this narrator (we know it's a himself by the use of the adjective difuso) could very well be speaking as or on behalf of the author, who, with it, rebels against certain time-worn "hispaniard" literary conventions. (Thanks for coining that one, K. I hope you don't mind my broadening the definition of your neologism.)
"A pesar de que la mía es historia, no la empezaré por el arca de Noé y la genealogía de sus ascendientes como acostumbran hacerlo los antiguos historiadores españoles de América, que deben ser nuestros prototipos." (91)

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Hope it didn't hurt as much to read as it did to write.