Tristes History

The story of Cristobal Artola, nicknamed El Triste, scion of the mean streets and bars of Buenos Aires' bleak urban sprawl. His politics: a heady-mix of Evita, his own dead mother, and anti-communism; his law: the code of the pool hall. A chance meeting with Chaves, a disillusioned priest, sets Triste on a career of violence as a member of Argentina's death squads. The changing relationship between the two men is subtly woven into the history of the period. Vazquez Rial's cool, urban style strikes out rich new territory in Latin American writing.

This powerful, skillfully crafted novel of political repression by the military junta in Argentina during the 1970s is written from the perspective of a member of the death squads. Cristobal Artola, known as Triste, is a hit man at the bottom of a hierarchy of assassins, a sad servant of fascism. Born in the slums of Buenos Aires to a washerwoman and a pimp, Triste grows up outside the law. After his mother dies, the streetwise youth works the pool halls for an underworld boss. Later, Triste is recruited by a cynical priest in the pay of the junta to help rid Argentina of its enemies. Triste fires into crowds at antigovernment demonstrations and kills Jews, Communists, strike leaders and other subversives. But after visiting a torture center and seeing the end result of the kidnappings he performs, his relationship with his employers changes and the novel moves toward its terrifying resolution. Rial's tale is unsparingly honest, narrated with detachment and a dreamlike clarity that make this "unofficial story" about Argentina's "disappeared" all the more haunting and persuasive. This is the first of the Argentinean author's novels to be published in English.
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