Stasis: Border Wars in 20th and 21st Century Latin American Literature and Film

Abstract

This dissertation examines literature and cinema about 20th century border wars in Latin America, namely the Chaco, Soccer, and Falklands/Malvinas Wars. I present a paradigm for considering these wars that moves beyond the dichotomies of the border—in or out—and war—friend or enemy—in order to reflect the contemporary challenges of regional and global integration. Replacing the Greek term polemos, meaning war with an external enemy, with stasis, meaning stagnation and civil uprising, I show how textual, historical, and philosophical interpretations of the linked concepts of hypostasis, stasis, and ecstasy resonate with contemporary conflicts over sovereignty and borders. In particular, regarding the 1932-1935 Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay, I analyze works by Augusto Cespedes, Adolfo Costa du Rels, and Augusto Roa Bastos, arguing that borders present an incomplete enclosure of the national political body. I show how the Chaco border creates the conditions for contemporary siege, re-configuring the mouth as site of cannibalist consumption in a novel by Wilmer Urrelo and speech in a film directed by Paz Encina. Regarding the 1969 Soccer War between El Salvador and Honduras, I analyze the late poetry of Roque Dalton and a novel by Horacio Castellanos Moya, considering literary texts compared to documents of property and citizenship for migrants, citizens, landowners, and poets under stagnant regional integration. Finally, I consider the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas War between Argentina and the United Kingdom through analysis of a poem by Susana Thenon and novels by Rodolfo Fogwill and Carlos Gamerro. I argue that Malvinas cultural production draws on repeated metaphors from the conquest and dictatorship, interrupted in ecstasy. Together, I show that cultural production about these three border wars contributes to the conceptual reconfiguration of Latin American and border studies when considered as part of the conflicting stagnation and uproar of stasis