A political malaise of smoke and mirrors, secretive plots and political rebellion create the tone of My Tender Matador, the Pedro Lemebel book which concerns a foiled Guerilla plot to take down the Augusto Pinochet regime in 1980s Chile. As this week’s lecture puts it, it is as much a political drama as it is a love story. This is fitting in the sense that, speaking for myself, political oppression and conflict means little when authors do not put a face to those who are most affected by it, as well as do not shine light on the interpersonal relationships we as readers might relate to even under much different circumstances. Under dictatorship, it is often humanity which most brightly shines through the dogmatic oppression, jack boots and party slogans. It is with this landscape Pedro Lemebel creates a classic not merely related to the past, but like with most of our course readings, remains relevant through to the present. 

    The question of gender, as well as one’s identity under authoritarianism, is highlighted throughout the narrative. The story revolves around the central protagonist, the “Queen of the Corner,” or La Loca de Frente. In addition to what has already been said in the lecture of her character name’s etymology, I interpreted Frente as a nod to the “front” she must maintain while keeping up appearances in a time of conformity under totalitarianism. To be outside the norm is a counter-culture statement itself. Yet with the bovine complacency towards love songs—cultural artefacts which might be seen as commercial and banal in any other circumstance—on her sleeve La Loca wears a wish for escapism: through political change, or interpersonal relationships. This is further reflected in her dynamic with the revolutionary Carlos, to which many of this week’s blogs have referred to as either toxic or loveless. While I’m not sure an entire relationship can be distilled in this way from an outside perspective, there are certainly struggles which, owing to the turbulent times, are certain to find their root cause in the totalitarian regime which surrounds them and a wish for change. It is in the metaphor of Carlos and La Loca for real world political conflict the reader is able to assign a face to the anguish others went through in 1980s Chile. 

    My question to the class: Do you agree that the goal of Pedro Lemebel, as well as other authors speaking on socio-political world events we had studied, is to humanise the conflict, or simply tell their own truth? In what ways do the two complement each other, or are incompatible? S