Gender and the State in Hijo de hombre

Abstract

The first novel in Augusto Roa Bastos’s trilogy on the “monotheism of power” narrates a particular vision of early twentieth-century Paraguayan history. Hi jo de h ombre (1960, revised in 1982) focuses on a twenty-five-year period between the sighting of a comet in 1910 and the Chaco War (1932–35). With such momentous events as bookends, it comes as no surprise that history figures as a major theme in the novel. The author develops a series of tensions that render historiography very problematic. These tensions appear between official history and that of the people, between the particular and the national, between oral and written discourse, between writing¹ and action, and between the moment and its precursors and consequences. At the same time, historical continuity in the world of the common people in the novel is not only underscored in the repetition of historical events such as peasant revolts, but is also assured, according to the elderly Macario Francia, in each new generation: “El hombre, mis hijos ... es como un río. Tiene barranca y orilla. Nace y desemboca en otros ríos. Alguna utilidad de be prestar. Mai río es el que muere en un ester o” (20) [“Man, my sons, is like a river, which has banks to keep it to its course, which is fed by other rivers and which in turn feeds them. Men, like rivers, must serve some purpose. It is a bad river which ends up in a bog” (18)].