In the last year of his career, the best soccer player in the world receives a mysterious postcard with an urgent request: run for president of the Argentine Republic. The protagonist becomes convinced that the country needs a president who does not come from politics and accepts. The plot seems delirious but it is not entirely implausible in a country as passionate about football and politics as Argentina. That’s the story it tells The goal I’m missing (Galerna), first fiction novel written by the Spanish economist and political consultant Alfredo Serrano Mancillawho he will present it together with Álvaro García Linera and Fernando Signorini this Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. in the Alejandra Pizarnik room (Yellow Pavilion) at the 48th Buenos Aires Book Fair.
A few years ago Serrano Mancilla published Evo: rescue operation (Random House), a non-fiction book that addressed the complex political-diplomatic plot that was launched to guarantee the safety of Evo Morales and García Linera after the coup d’état in Bolivia. The author defines that production as “a real story that at times seemed like fiction.” He now dared to execute the reverse operation: imagined a fictional plot that could be real, an “electoral political thriller” which allowed him to “write without so many prejudices and free himself from the self-censorship that one sometimes imposes on oneself.” Politics is usually interpreted from narrative journalism or non-fiction, but here Serrano Mancilla proposes doing it from pure fiction, with imagined characters and in a register that other writers such as the Spanish Manuel Vázquez Montalbán or the Greek Petros Márkaris worked on. “The political thriller brings out many prejudices when writing fiction“Of course one brings their ideological position, but in this case neither the candidate nor the narrator nor the environment carry my prejudices,” he declares.
The writer is struck by the fact that there is no more literature surrounding electoral campaigns: “There is a lot of exciting intrigue in literary terms, there is always an interesting ending because we don’t know who is going to win. Elections cause an exaggeration of emotions, passions, intrigues, pettiness and surreal situations“. Due to his profession, he attended several campaigns in different Latin American countries and assures that ego disputes coexist there with human issues linked to purely ideological aspects. Another interesting condiment is the influence of the family in the most critical moments: “No manual measures the importance of the intimate environment in a campaign. Political analysis sometimes forgets this factor,” explains the director of CELAG, and clarifies that when creating his fiction he avoided obvious anchors in reality.
The fictionalized Argentina is much more fragmented than the real one and, although there are references to political parties that everyone knows, “the purpose was not to make a political x-ray or tell what happens within Kirchnerism, Macrism or the libertarians.” About the emergence of outsider fictitious in the world of politics, says: “It wouldn’t be the first time. There is a very important African player who won the Ballon d’Or and presided over Liberia, Chilavert was a candidate in Paraguay although it went badly. Why couldn’t something like this happen? in a country as football-loving as Argentina?” he asks. The Argentine was born in Gualeguaychú and played a good part of his career in a European club. This operation nullifies any temptation to associate him with real characters like Messi or Maradona. “For me it was important, I wanted to take it out of the Buenos Aires environment and prevent anyone from thinking that they were real characters,” details the author, and reveals that when the player decides to be a candidate, he chooses two of his best friends to accompany him. on that journey: a Uruguayan and an Andalusian. “Everything is written from the point of view of the Andalusian for obvious reasons. I had the need to do this because it was going to be a great effort to write the novel in Argentine or Uruguayan.”
–What is the element that most attracts your attention in the campaigns?
–I am interested in the non-linear, the campaigns are like a cocktail shaker of Kafkaesque situations. It is something that is not known from the outside and when one enters that labyrinth situations can arise like those I propose in the book, for example, that the candidate has a conflict with his mother the night before the presidential debate. It is also a moment in which everyone claims to have greater decision-making capacity than the candidate himself; this game between advisors and the world of politics is very unique. Many times the team tries to make the candidate stop being who they really are. And no campaign ends the same as it begins.
–Both politics and sport (especially football) are lived with great passion in Argentina and are mass phenomena. How did you bring those worlds together?
–I am passionate about both universes so it was very natural for me to mix them. In Argentina this occurs both institutionally and in everyday life: People talk about politics and football over a Sunday dinner after eating pasta. On the other hand, today the phenomenon of outsiders and in that framework it is natural to imagine an event like the one in the novel. There were characters like Riquelme or Tévez recently. What character outside of politics could be more attractive as a candidate than a football idol? Let’s imagine any of the World Cup players being candidates… That would alter the order of traditional politics and it seemed very suggestive to me.
In relation to the controversy that President Milei was involved in after suspending the presentation of his book at the FIL, Serrano Mancilla believes: “It is contradictory that the current president is focusing on the cultural battle, the fight for common senses. I It seems legitimate that they want to give it, but it is contradictory because the doors to the spaces where culture is discussed are always closed. If someone does not agree with their ideological or cultural framework, it seems that they must trample on it or create the greatest possible difficulties. The Fair is a symbolic, massive and democratic event, where society participates at all levels.”
