1970 in Argentine Magazines and Periodicals: Between Marechal and Borges

Abstract

This article proposes some hypotheses about the contemporary reception of the two most important books of Argentine literature that were published in the mid-1970s —Megafón, o la guerra, by Leopoldo Marechal, and El informe de Brodie, by Jorge Luis Borges—, shortly after the political fact that marked a before and after in the history of Argentine politics: the kidnapping and death of General Pedro Eugenio Aramburu by Montoneros on May 29, 1970. The hypothesis of the work maintains that this unique fact and exceptional, as Beatriz Sarlo describes in La pasión y la excepción, is manifested both in the uncomfortable reception of the two books, written prior to their publication dates, as well as in the political uses and ideological interpretations that mark their readings. For this, the article assembles the map of the magazines that circulated in 1970, the first area of reception of the books, in which the axes of the political and revolutionary discussion were being settled, both in the political-ideological magazines —Cristianismo y Revolución, Propósitos o Pasado y Presente— and the great weeklies —Primera Plana, Confirmado, Panorama, Gente, Siete Días—, as well as in the cultural magazines: El Escarabajo de Oro, Envido, Los Libros, Macedonio, Nuevos Aires , Sur, Testigo, whose pages were crossed, with rare exceptions, by the heightened ideological debate.