“Hasta tomar el cielo por asalto”: Competing Historical Moods in Patricio Pron’s "El espíritu de mis padres sigue subiendo en la lluvia"

Abstract

Patricio Pron’s "El espíritu de mis padres sigue subiendo en la lluvia" is among the many twenty-first century Argentine novels that grapple with the historical events of the 1960s and 70s and their ongoing repercussions in the present. Based on the title of Pron’s work, one might assume that the text would be focused on the spirit of possibility that characterized his parents’ generation — the “spirit of hope for change” that John Beverley has identified as part of the cultural ethos of the armed struggle. However, Pron never provides a detailed account of his narrator’s parents’ activities as members of the Peronist organization Guardia de Hierro, nor does he offer a thorough depiction of the spirit of the era. This marked contradiction between what the title suggests the novel is about and what it actually addresses gestures to an alternate layer of meaning in the text, conveying the way in which the legacies of both the dictatorship and of neoliberal governance continue to overshadow memories and representations of the political movements that preceded the dictatorship and of the spirit of possibility that accompanied them. At the same time, the novel’s title and the passage from which it emerges also speak to a coexisting desire in twenty-first century Argentine literature to regain access to the spirit of possibility of the political movements of the 1960s and early 70s so as to be able to use it for the country’s future.