José Emilio Burucúa used to dive into the recesses of the less recent history, as their sphere of action focuses on early modernity. But there are times not to be missed and this lover of art and connoisseur of human eografía g more than met the challenge professional fate had in store for him. A single name, the second Man Mountain (Raul), and a whole story to his
s behind migration, identity, pain and homeland Burucúa reconstructed in this "Encyclopedia BS" (Peripheral). It is not only a historical account vertebrate from the memoirs of a Romanian Jewish immigrant in Argentina makes a living as a fighter. We are facing a complete atlas the ways in which transited the emigration of European Jews to Latin America.
- What was to stop at this story, what caught his eye that made me want to translate it into a book as rare as this "Encyclopedia BS"?
- I found myself, by some fortuitous circumstances, hold a family archive consists of a memoir and a significant amount of documentation that had joined the main protagonists of this story Raul. I first heard to suy was many years ago when it had been a fighter and I, as a teenager, went to see him: he was the second "Mountain Man." Find out who had written those reports as surprised me and when I read I came across a piece that made me not miss this great opportunity to write a story about an ordinary man who also was a good picture of how hurricanes in the history of the twentieth century had blown on a very simple person whose major aim was to achieve happiness. Although these winds may rage with him, could sail from his native Romania, through the old Palestine, Israel, France, Canada aborted destination and finally get to Argentina, where he died. A golden opportunity for a historian.
- Why did you choose a format as striking as this experiment
to historiographical
, how was the development of the book?
- At first I thought to publish his memoirs as such, but later proved to be too complex to write because Raul was purchased "Manual" by Maria Moliner ... imagine. If we add the logical errors of a Romanian speaker who learned to speak Castilian in his forties, the difficulty is understandable. But the text does an incredible impact and even has fresh, so I decided to quote him as much as possible in the life that falls to Raul. In fact, I am convinced that his memoirs end up in a public library in Argentina.
- But why this form of an encyclopedia?
- There were so many characters that appeared that I was unable to put together a story that preserves linearity must have a historical narrative to be intelligible. I decided to make a mosaic, so that the characters presented separately, but respecting the linearity and inter adding references
common text encyclopedias and dictionaries. Having chosen this way I came to write that preliminary discourse, which is actually a parody of D'Alembert to the "Encyclopedia" and where I took for some kind critical trends in current historiography. My "darts" are against the current tendency to assume that reality has not existed beyond of what has been told about what happened. I think so, there has been something real and we can approach this through the study of the sources. Although the general reader can skip and go directly to the characters.
- What is special about the history of these characters, BS family members?
- What is special is something that finally is general in the country is
immigration as Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil ... Are people coming from all over the world that are there, they love, they hate each other, meet, mingle and reproduce.
- All the characters suffer in some way, the onslaught of the Jewish diaspora. How do you see that in the story?
"The official reception of Nazi leaders in Argentina is a scandal"
- At the beginning of the story is a very strong Jewish identity because there are characters still faithful to the religion of their ancestors. After the generation appears of the two main characters (Cecilia and Raul), who try to live a life where Judaism appears as something remote and try to assimilation with the surroundings, rather than differentiation. This evolution is perceived well and, of course, the deepest wound of anti-Semitism worldwide eliminationist psychological and social character.
- It is striking how in those Latin American countries experienced almost the same
time Jews fleeing the Holocaust and Nazi responsible for this human aberration.
- Many studies insist on a certain complicity of military rule 43 and the first Peronist government under the Third Reich and many Nazis found refuge in Argentina, among other South American nations. That combined with a reception of Jews expelled from Europe, at the beginning of the war and after 45. Historians and journalists have examined this scandal reception, even in many cases official who had hidden and veiled Nazi leaders in Argentina. Have provided abundant information to show that it is a myth.
- Although this is a narrative historiographical based on facts and documented sources, this "Encyclopedia" has stylistic features characteristic of magical realism, do you agree?
- I agree to the stylistic sense, as it is inevitable. When you do a story in South America, especially after the examples of García Márquez and Vargas Llosa, can not help it because as a teenager was literature that was read. In this regard I have taken a glove on one occasion threw Giovanni Levi on a visit to Argentina. Levi said that the story must have the courage to take on the big revulsive and new narrative of the novel from Joyce, basically. Also I wanted to do a thing that could bring any reader, not just fellow historians.
- What can historiography to literature?
- first and foremost on characters. The literature has the right to invent, whereas it can only investigate historiography. But, as Carlo Ginzburg says, I am not of those who put truth in quotation marks. For me there is a truth that is very difficult and probably never reach, but there has been something that is the experience of men in the past, different from ours, and a historian has a duty to dive in and tell us what was what. Thus we see that either come from that, or we already are something completely different to that world. But in one way or another, there is always the possibility that some of our ancestors revived strongly in our time.
- Since, the final analysis, this book is constructed from the most violent storm that struck last century history, what do you think are the worst hurricanes is undergoing society now?
"It is time to take the path of other welfare-state capitalism"
- There hurricanes will sweep real evils. For example, the hurricane of unrest in North Africa, which I suppose the elimination of dictatorships. I find it very interesting that there is a hurricane that devastates with this, but my fear is that implies a strengthening of religious fundamentalism, I do not think that is a unique danger in the Islamic world but also see it in our own world. I'm not an atheist nor a 'comecuras', but I appreciate that in the West have been able to build a secular society in the sense that there is a multiplicity of beliefs to live together in a plane of equality among all, we can build something that is common and different civil society, common projects that have nothing to do with what each believes about his soul and his own destiny. That is one of the greatest contributions to Western history of mankind and that is in grave danger everywhere, even in the Muslim world where it is perhaps more noticeable. It's very interesting to see whether this process of Arab countries leads to a strengthening of secular society. What I see now, after the disaster has meant the economic crisis that began in late 2008 and still suffer, is the responsibility of one organization of contemporary capitalism. Is this capitalism focused on the financial boom in the super powers of the banking system and not finding a solution to the crisis of capitalism (which does not mark the end of capitalism, as some left-wing colleagues believe). It is time to take the path of another capitalism, welfare state capitalism, on terms quite different. What would have revolted is, again, the pressure of the financial system and banks that collectively have just said in Davos that they will not accept any form of regulation. Enough! The road has to go by regulation strong financial system and taxation on profits of finance. We can not create money with money. Is a hurricane that still going on and that states are coping with the energy deben. / Inés Martín Rodrigo / LIVDUCA
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