ANDThe body is, really, a transversal element of all this literature, especially the female one. This is confirmed by the books of Agustina Bazterrica, The unworthy onesand by Giovanna Rivero, fresh earth from his grave.
Agustina Bazterrica is known internationally for the novel exquisite corpsewinner of the Clarín Novel Prize in 2017 and became a bestseller, in which it portrays a world in which human beings turn to cannibalism after a virus contaminated the animal meat that they were used to serving at their tables.
In The unworthy ones returns to dystopia, this time that of a world that has been devastated by an ecological disaster and in which there is barely a focus of life in a kind of cloister where women survivors of the catastrophe arrive. In that space, which they call “House of the Sacred Brotherhood”, while some enjoy privileged treatment, others are subjected to torture and sexual abuse in the name of the faith of a hitherto unknown god. “Without faith there is no protection“, they repeat – they make them repeat – constantly.
This is related to one of the scenarios described by Rivero, a Bolivian living in the United States. In The meekness, one of the most recognized stories in his book, tells of the sexual abuse of a religious leader to a 15-year-old girl inside a North American Mennonite camp. There is also incest, bestiality and revenge, and a very striking rescue of the figure of the Bolivian indigenous.
The “House of the Sacred Brotherhood” and that Mennonite camp are religious contexts that connect with Meruane’s treatment of a space like the school: all three are places where discipline is sought to be forged, but in which leaders, subjects, witches or monsters constantly break the rules with violent attitudes that reflect the structural flaws of those systems.
