Girl Protagonists of Chilean Dictatorship Novels for the Young

Abstract

Narratives for children about Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile (1973–89) written by the sons and daughters of that era constitute a recognised genre. For the most part the genre features boy characters who not only have voice and choice, but also unrealistically win the fight against the oppressors. This paper examines two of the rare works with girl protagonists, paying attention to how their voices are constructed: Mariana Osorio Gumá's Tal vez vuelvan los pájaros [Maybe the birds will return] (Mexico, 2013) and Matilde by Carola Martínez Arroyo (Argentina, 2016). I apply Deleuze's theories about the gaze to girls to identify patterns that afford the construction of ‘lucid’ protagonists in terms of recurring modes of language production (silence, ordered discourse, invention), giving rise to inquisitive girls. Through the construction of a girl's lucid gaze, which can withstand and narrate the horrors of the dictatorship, these novels offer young audiences a powerful space for historic and collective memory.