Francisco “Paco” Urondo
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Julia Leverone (translating)
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Por Soledades
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For Solitudes
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Un hombre es perseguido, una
familia entera, una organización, un pueblo. La responsable de esta situación no es la codicia, sino un comerciante con sus precios, con la imposición de las reglas del juego. Los empresarios, la policía con la imposición de las reglas del juego. Por eso ese hombre, ese pueblo, esa familia, esa organización, se siente perseguida. Es más, comienzan a perseguirse entre ellos, a delatarse, a difamarse, y juntos, a su vez, se lanzan a perseguir quimeras, a olvidarse de las legítimas, de las costosas pero realizables aspiraciones; marginan la penosa esperanza. Entonces toda la familia, todo el pueblo, entra en el nivel más alto de la persecución: la paranoia, esa refinada búsqueda de los perseguidos históricos y culturales. Y ésta es la triste historia de los pueblos derrotados, de las familias envilecidas, de las organizaciones inútiles, de los hombres solitarios, la llama que se consume sin el viento, los aires que soplan sin amor, los amores que se marchitan sobre la memoria del amor o sus fatuas presunciones. |
One man is persecuted, an
entire family, an organization, a people. The entity responsible in this situation is not greed but a businessman with a price, with an imposition of the rules of the game. The entrepreneurs, the police, imposing the rules of the game. Therefore the man, the people, the family, the organization feel persecuted. What’s more, they begin to accuse one another, to betray and slander one another, and together, in turn, begin to attack chimeras, to forget their legitimate and costly but attainable dreams; they reduce pitiful hope. So the whole family, the whole people, enter into the highest level of persecution: paranoia, that meticulous searching of the historically and culturally persecuted. And this is the sad story of a defeated people, of degraded families, of useless organizations, of lonely men, the flame that consumes itself without wind, the airs that blow without love, the love that withers on the memory of love or its fatuous presumptions. |
Francisco “Paco” Urondo (1930 – 1976) was an Argentine writer and militant of the FAR and Montoneros. He saw his activism and writing as inseparable, and was killed by the Argentine state at the start of the Dirty War. Urondo produced eighteen works of poetry and prose, including a novel, short stories, and essays, along with plays and scripts for the stage and screen. He is most famous for conducting an interview, while imprisoned, with the survivors of the Trelew massacre, published as “La Patria Fusilada.” His work has been otherwise untranslated.
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Julia Leverone is an instructor of Spanish and creative writing at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her poems have been placed in Crab Orchard Review, Cimarron Review, B O D Y, Posit, and Sugar House Review. Julia has her Ph.D. in comparative literature from Washington University in St. Louis and translates from the Spanish. Her translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Witness, Boston Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, and in América Invertida: An Anthology of Emerging Uruguayan Poets. You may visit her website at: http://julialeverone.com/
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