On the Trail of the Murderous State: On Latin American Alternate History

• In Event: La Ciencia Ficción en América Latina: Pensar el Objeto

Abstract

Science fiction professes the ability to explore alternative versions of history. In the case of El Muertero Zabaletta, the graphic novel by Agrimbau and Ginevra, there is a future society in which the State advocates its right to decide who lives and who perishes. In it, Agrimbau and Ginevra share the story of a social hygiene inspector employed by the State to get rid of undesirables. Following Walter Benjamin, the narrative depicts a godless Buenos Aires, in which inhabitants use cable cars for transportation, there is no obelisk, and carousels spit out daily tokens with the names of citizens sentenced to death. The plot suggests a sense of argentinidad that fulfills an oblique destiny: to serve as home to a criminal government order, thus speaking of the murderous vocation of the Latin American State.

Through uchronia or alternate history, Agrimbau and Ginevra explore the origin of the national State’s homicidal vocation. By way of counterfactuals, their examination of the evil disposition of the State invites us to determine the point in the past at which history hasn’t yet shifted toward a homicidal bent. Their reading goes back to the early twentieth century—close to the first centennial of the May Revolution (May 25, 1910)—at which time Argentina was among the ten most prosperous nations on the planet. Signaled as the point of nexus or historical inflection of the story, it is from that instant on that the account by Agrimbau and Ginevra differs from our version of today.

Author

• Héctor D Fernández L'Hoeste, Georgia State University