Violence as liberation
7x1, Siete crímenes
per cápita
Ana Valentina Benjamin
Lengua de Trapo • 2006 • 92
pages
Javier Sánchez Zapatero
Translation : Jean Burrell
Via their individual monologues two women look back over their lives.
Without taboos or concessions to decorum Laura and Natalia recount
their journey from their childhood, which was marked by marginalization,
violence and male domination, and tell how crime has been the only
element of consolation and catharsis they have found to come to terms
with the oppressive environment around them. And so their lives can
be reduced to continually enumerating murders targeted basically
against the male sex and carrying out all kinds of original practices
and criminal modes. Far from providing a simple exercise on the ever-attractive
aesthetic of evil, the catalogue of crimes described in the book
reflects the poverty of a society in which violence seems to be the
only way to achieve legitimacy.
Composed according to a dual-voiced
structure in which the voices of the two main characters become
the only channel of information for the reader, 7
x 1. Siete crímenes per cápita is
especially interesting because of the brilliant use its author – who happens to be the great-niece
of the German philosopher Walter Benjamin – makes of the figure of
the unreliable narrator who shows the world through a different prism
from the conventional one and for that reason puts forward conclusions
and thoughts removed from those of the rest of society. Laura and
Natalia justify their crimes in such a way that their speech ends
by disturbing the reader, who is horrified by the prospect of facing
a reality in which victims and executioners suffer from the same
moral corruption and so it is impossible to identify with anyone
at all. The exaggerated and occasionally grotesque nature of the
events related has the effect that sometimes the feeling of anxiety
is outweighed by doubt, so that interpretation of what we are reading
hovers between horror and incredulity. The book's final chapter strengthens
these doubts as to interpretation when it changes the viewpoint used
and shows, through an objective narrator, the encounter between the
two women and their readiness to commit a fresh and supreme crime – ‘one',
as the characters say, ‘that will stand for seven'. And so brutal
reality mingles with the necessary desire for change and the constant
doubt aroused by the self-justifying and deliberately realistic tone
of the book's chief characters
Gripping and easy to read at one sitting
because of its lively style and short length, the book provides
an interesting reflection on the violence inherent in the contemporary
world and in particular in certain emotional relationships, a reflection
that points up the attraction and power of crime in a society that
only brings forth new forms of hate.
