Mondays at Zenda. Monday of Spanish-language storytelling. This Monday, devoted to Que se vayan todos, a novel by Argentine writer Ramón Starc (Tandil, 1991) which has just been published in Spain by the publishing house Candaya. Grounding its narration in a political, social, and economic event of immense magnitude—the corralito during Fernando de la Rúa—now that a quarter of a century has passed since then, Starc manages to open small windows, not devoid of humor, toward the concrete lives of a series of characters who emerge affected by the disaster. The link between privatizing governmental decisions and the existential and material wound of the inhabitants of a given territory is presented here with violence and a fierce sense of fun.
The publisher themselves notes, with regard to the book: “
In December 2001 the government of Fernando de la Rúa confiscated, in what became popularly known as the “corralito,” the savings of millions of people.
Overnight, Argentines discover that their money is no longer theirs: it exists, but they cannot withdraw it from the bank. Week after week the tension grows, until everything explodes: workers, retirees, well-off professionals and rentiers go out into the streets to demand what is theirs. Looting, theft, destruction, and death shake the country for forty-eight hours.
The Plaza de Mayo, in front of the Casa Rosada, and December 20 were the epicenter of the disturbances. The square could be entered on those days through three avenues and four streets. Que se vayan todos consists of seven chapters: the breaking of seven lives that happened to coincide there. Each chapter completes, and changes, the meaning of the others. The reader is invited to enter, the book and History, whichever path they prefer.
There is a state of siege that nobody pays attention to and people who live in cemeteries. There is no government, but there is the heir to a bank who wonders how much his family has to do with that crisis, a young journalist trying to tell what is happening as the novelist he would like to be, an exemplary and upwardly mobile official trapped in the sewers of a courthouse, a spy who seeks another spy, a Chinese merchant preparing to react to the looting, a retiree and an alcoholic bricklayer who daily cook a pot for fifty people, a group of the blind who hate a group of the deaf, and a girl who enjoys rock music.
And Ramón Starc narrates the dissolution of a country with rapid tempo and an infernally fluent voice, understanding something his generation seems to have forgotten: humor is always a better tool than solemnity, especially when recounting sad events that disrupted the world.
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Author: Ramón Starc. Title: Que se vayan todos. Publisher: Candaya. Available at: Todos tus libros.