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Introduction
Mauricio Rosencof, author of El bataraz is known not only for his literary output as a novelist and playwright but also as a member of the Movimiento Nacional de Liberación Tupamaros, a guerrilla group that formed in the late sixties. In order to emphasize their own struggles against modern forms of imperial repression, the Tupamaros took their name from Tupac Amaru, the last Incan leader to fight against Spanish imperialism. Rosencof s activity as a political dissident, however, came to an end in 1972 when he was ambushed by government forces and detained as a political prisoner. After die military coup in Uruguay in 1973, he was officially declared a hostage of the state.1 In prison until 1985, when a democratic government was reestablished in the country, he endured social isolation, torture, and humiliation. The painful memories from rfiat time have had a strong influence on Rosencof s writing, and works, such as El bataraz, have provided the author with a platform to delve into the complexities surrounding the abuse of power.
The dictatorships of South America's Southern Cone in the seventies and eighties rank among the great tragedies of the second half of the twentieth century. The prisons and concentration camps where thousands were tortured or killed have been a focal point for moral and ethical discussions on human rights as well as for a discussion of the problems in representing horrors of the past through different modes of communication. It is worthwhile contrasting El bataraz, a fictional representation of political repression and the abuse of power, with another of Rosencof s works that deals with the same time period. In Memorias del calabozo (1989) Rosencof himself, along with fellow Tupamaro member and hostage Eleuterio Huidobro Fernandez, through a series of conversations, reflected on his own personal experience of torture and humiliation as a prisoner under the Uruguayan military dictatorship. In this particular testimonial, Rosencof and Huidobro Fernández present themselves as reliable witnesses as they draw upon memories of their ordeal to offer an insightful look into past abuses of power by the state. Many such efforts that attempt to create an awareness of abuses and denounce the abusers strive to create a narration that is credible and accurate with regard to the...