Violence against women in Quién no

Such is the case with ‘Claro y contundente’ (pp. 59–79), which tells the story of Luciana and Andrés, a married couple who get a place in an elite school for their only son, Agustín, who has behavioural issues. They soon come face to face with the academic and social prejudice surrounding the education centre. Luciana notices how the medication has neutralised her son’s energy and made him distant. Knowing that she has lost him triggers her murderous instinct, which manifests itself ‘clearly and strongly’ every time she feels social pressure. This happens when, for example, Luciana meets the mothers of other children at the school: ‘she has the need to grab the revolver and shoot any of those women right in the middle of the forehead or, […] between eye and eye’.2 Spanish original: ‘tiene la necesidad de agarrar el revólver y dispararle a cualquier de esas mujeres justo en el medio de la frente o, […] entre ojo y ojo’; ‘Claro y contundente’, p. 72. Overall, she manages to control herself and answers them correctly without raising her voice. There are indications that Luciana has inherited her murderous instinct from her father, whom she remembers cleaning an unarmed gun ‘In case someday I decide to kill someone’.3 Spanish original: ‘Por si algún día me decido y mato a alguien’; ‘Claro y contundente’, p. 72. In this way, the desire to kill is prolonged over time, as is Luciana’s suffering. What is interesting in this story is the cause of Luciana’s criminal instinct. This is a consequence of her frustration as a mother for not being able to fit in with a conservative and prejudiced social environment that is especially cruel to those who are different, like her son. She believes that she has standardised her son by giving him drugs to stabilise his behaviour and this has made her complicit with the oppressive system: ‘“Agustín is not different anymore,” […] “he is now like the rest”’.4 Spanish original: ‘“Agustín no es más diferente”, […] “ahora es como todos”’; ‘Claro y contundente’, p. 77. Agustín represents ‘the other’ in this story, and Luciana’s desire to kill is a radical and necessary move to free herself and her son from the oppression inflicted by the strict social norms operating in the strict and snobbish community where they live. Yet, contesting the system turns Luciana into an outsider.

Luciana and Andrés are a prototype of the upper-middle-class couples who lived in the private residential areas that proliferated across the outskirts of Buenos Aires during the first two decades of the 21st century. These new residential spaces, popularly known as ‘country clubs’, offer a new beginning for ‘newly rich people’ with strict moral standards and represent a paradigm of a fast-decaying society in post-financial-crisis Argentina – places where there is a disproportionate interest in material comfort.5 For a detailed account of the causes and consequences of Argentina’s financial crisis, see Geethanjal Nataraj and Pravakar Sahoo, ‘Argentina’s Crisis: Causes and Consequences’, Economic and Political Weekly, 38.17 (2003), 1641–44. Piñeiro locates several of her novels in these elite residential areas, for example Las viudas de los jueves and Betibú. In these stories, families move to the country clubs in search of privacy. The ‘newly rich people’ use armoured doors, thick walls and fences to protect themselves from intruders. Their exclusivity implies a rupture from the past and cutting off their emotional ties with the outside world. By doing so, the residents isolate themselves and deny their responsibility for the high levels of poverty and social exclusion in the country.

Luciana and Andrés are ‘newly rich people’, who, according to Heredia, are different from ‘structurally rich people’.6 Mariana Heredia, ‘Ricos estructurales y nuevos ricos en Buenos Aires: primeras pistas sobre la reproducción y la recomposición de las clases altas’, Estudios Sociológicos, 29.85 (2011), 61–97, p. 63. ‘Structurally rich people’ enjoy financial capital, a well-established social status and cultural ties with Europe, while ‘newly rich people’ ignore their family ties, religion, refinement and manners and instead exalt individual merits like smartness and ambition. These locations, as we shall see, also create an exploitative atmosphere for women.

Yet, life in these residential areas is more complicated than it seems at first glance, as it is guided by xenophobic values, class division and violence. This happens because the values of ‘newly rich people’ are based on individual merits and a disproportionate interest in keeping up appearances. Only the strongest, financially speaking, succeed. Country clubs are therefore dehumanised places where financial success is the yardstick for social success. Double discourse and standards prevail, and violence and gender inequality materialise in these idyllic environments.

In ‘Claro y contundente’, social repression closes Luciana in on herself. Dedicated exclusively to the care of her family, she follows the norms that perpetuate her husband’s status and accepts her place in the background, knowing that her opinion is not taken into account. We see this, for example, during her meeting with the school staff and her husband:

But who dictates the good customs in contemporary Argentina? And why do good customs only apply to women? I have already mentioned that Piñeiro often presents marriage as a site of female repression and exploitation. There is the negative perception of Luciana as a housewife ‘only’ who lives at her husband’s expense. While Luciana openly declares her lack of interest in finances or business, Andrés is presented as ‘the best financial analyst at the bank’9 Spanish original: ‘el mejor analista financiero del banco’; ‘Claro y contundente’, p. 65. because he engages in million-dollar operations at the office, and Luciana says ‘he cares more about work than anything else in the world’.10 Spanish original: ‘porque le preocupa más el trabajo que ninguna otra cosa en el mundo’; ‘Claro y contundente’, p. 65. The social pressure is such that Luciana is unable to verbalise her frustrations either in front of her husband, for whom she has ceased to exist, or in front of others. For example, Andrés’ sister makes a strong defence of his tendency to forget things: ‘so much trouble because he lost his wallet sometime; I would like to see you doing the financial operations that he does every day’.11 Spanish original: ‘tanto lío porque perdió alguna vez la billetera, ya me gustaría verte a vos haciendo las operaciones financieras que hace él todos los días’; ‘Claro y contundente’, p. 65. While downplaying the forgetfulness of her brother, she humiliates Luciana by presenting her as controlling: ‘Don’t control him anymore, he is not your son, he is your husband, he kills himself working for you, what else do you want?’12 Spanish original: ‘No lo controles más, no es tu hijo, es tu marido, se mata laburando por ustedes, ¿qué más querés?’; ‘Claro y contundente’, p. 63. Luciana does not answer because, as we shall learn later regarding her meeting with other mothers, answering firmly while raising her tone is ‘something that good customs do not accept’.13 Spanish original: ‘algo que las buenas costumbres no aceptan’; ‘Claro y contundente’, p. 67. Her sister-in-law concludes that, at this point in life, Luciana is not going to change Andrés or any other thing in her life. Luciana agrees. So far, Luciana has managed to control herself and has thus been able to hide her true feelings. However, social repression in the family context triggers Luciana’s latent criminal instinct: ‘Kill. Grab a revolver, arm it, load it, put it in your purse and as soon as that someone, whoever, gives you enough reason, shoot’.14 Spanish original: ‘Matar. Agarrar un revólver, armarlo, cargarlo, guardarlo en la cartera y en cuanto ese alguien, quien sea, le dé pie suficiente, disparar’; ‘Claro y contundente’, p. 64. Luciana’s murderous instinct represents the possibility of escaping the repressive and violent environment that limits her existence as a wife and mother.

In ‘Claro y contundente’ there is the idea that only those women who manage to free themselves from gender prejudices can achieve better versions of themselves. In Luciana’s case, her killer instinct symbolises the temptation to break with the established and make a fresh start by killing those around her with a revolver – a dramatic and bizarre exit that requires unusual courage. The end of the story is ambiguous and does not reveal her final decision.

‘Basura para las gallinas’ (pp. 51–59) is a brief story that recounts the thoughts of a woman minutes after she has performed an abortion on her daughter with a knitting needle. The daughter remains locked in a room after having a foetus removed with a needle by her mother, who is in charge of throwing it away. The mother, whose name and age are unknown, goes to the rubbish bins with the aim of leaving the remains of the foetus a few minutes before the dustbin lorry comes. With the use of a precise literary style, Piñeiro conveys her views on the urgent need to legalise the voluntary interruption of pregnancy in Argentina.

Piñeiro’s thesis with this story is clear: legalising the free and secure interruption of pregnancy was a priority in Argentina because (1) as in the past, illegal abortion continued to be practised at home, in the secrecy of the family environment and with rudimentary means; and (2) it mainly affected unprivileged women who did not have the resources to go to private clinics or travel abroad to undergo the procedure. In view of the poor legal advances on this issue, Piñeiro implies that the lives of women, particularly of poor women, did not matter in contemporary Argentina.

In the story, there is the memory of an event led by her grandmother, who killed the woman’s sister while performing a home abortion: ‘she now knows what to do if her daughter screams in pain and she does not stop bleeding; she knows where to take her, she is not going to die’.15 Spanish original: ‘ella ahora sabe qué tiene que hacer si su hija grita de dolor y no deja de largar sangre, sabe dónde llevarla, a ella no se la va a morir’; ‘Basura para las gallinas’, p. 57. From her grandmother, the woman learnt how to face such a painful act. Practising a home abortion is also a transformative act that changes the characters involved.

A cold environment surrounds the mother on her way to the rubbish bins: there is no trace of sentimentalism in either her thoughts or her actions. The weather on the night is also cold: ‘the cold of July cuts her face. She rubs her arms to get warm. She shakes the keychain like a rattle’.16 Spanish original: ‘el frío de Julio le corta la cara. Se frota los brazos para dares calor. Agita el llavero como si fuera un sonajero’; ‘Basura para las gallinas’, p. 56. The woman is not carrying a rattle in her hands but a bunch of keys to the doors that she has to pass through before reaching the rubbish bins. Her path can be understood as a metaphor for her transformation process as she travels in solitude down the corridors, opening and locking several doors, until she reaches the street. On her way, she does not meet anyone, and she indicates that she does not know her neighbours by name, showing evidence of her and her family’s isolation and loneliness in the suburb, to where, it is implied, they moved from the interior in search of a better life. The protagonist constantly remembers the poverty that they came from: the countryside, perhaps a village in the interior, where there were no buildings, no neighbours, no doors with locks and no plastic bags. However, Piñeiro denounces the dramatic situation for the unprivileged classes and shows that moving to the city has not liberated the protagonists from structural poverty. In the city, there is nobody to accompany her and her pregnant daughter through this painful experience. They have also been abandoned by the State institutions and, in a way, have been forced to perpetrate this act. This indicates that a lack of resources normalises the practice of violent acts against women. As a consequence, they become double victims for being women and for being poor.

Similarly to ‘Claro y contundente’, there are no good or bad guys in ‘Basura para las gallinas’. The female protagonist is forced to perform an abortion on her daughter in such precarious conditions because she has no alternative. In this line, Piñeiro makes it clear that this woman cares about her daughter, whom she was in a hurry to see and she would not let die. The woman was confident that she could always take her daughter to hospital if she did not stop bleeding or feeling pain. The voice of this woman mixes with other female voices in the book, indicating that all women, one way or another, are victims of an oppressive system. This is because, in a patriarchal system, motherhood and family care, including the interruption of pregnancy, are the sole responsibility of women.

Where are the males in this story? Male figures are absent, other than a brief mention of the protagonist’s husband, who, we learn, uses his bicycle ‘when he is employed’.17 Spanish original: ‘cuando tiene trabajo’; ‘Basura para las gallinas’, p. 55. The violent city dogs are used as a metaphor for violent men attacking women and devouring rubbish in the city: ‘She is cold but she cannot leave and let one of them ravenously attack the bag she has just taken out for the rubbish bin’.18 Spanish original: ‘Tiene frío pero no puede irse y dejar que uno de ellos ataque con voracidad la bolsa que acaba de sacar para el basurero’; ‘Basura para las gallinas’, p. 56. The scene indicates the formal division between males’ and females’ roles in society. In the countryside, she remembers, ‘there were hens that ate the garbage’.19 Spanish original: ‘Pero había gallinas que se comían la basura’; ‘Basura para las gallinas’, p. 57. In popular culture, overprotective mothers are often called ‘hens’. In the story, the hens are also in charge of eating and making the remains of the illegal abortion disappear and erasing all traces of the violent and illegal act.

At the end of her journey, she hugs the bag to her chest, showing a hint of resistance at abandoning the remains of the foetus there and a last unconscious moment of affection:

‘El abuelo Martín’ narrates with precision and brevity how the discovery of his grandmother’s femicide in the past shakes the protagonist’s life. Hernán travels with his son, Nicolás, to the house of his grandfather, Martín, who died three months ago. Hernán is in charge of reorganising the house before putting it up for sale. On the way to the house, Hernán remembers his grandfather with affection and how his construction work encouraged Hernán to study architecture. He could hardly remember his grandmother, whom no one in the family talked about because, as he learnt from a cousin, she had abandoned his grandfather for another man. However, when he begins to knock down a wall that divides the living room in two and on which a portrait of his grandmother hangs, he discovers the woman’s walled-in body.

‘El abuelo Martín’, like the two previous stories analysed in this chapter, captures the moment when the protagonist is about to collapse, indicating that, from that fall, his true identity will emerge. The story addresses a central theme in Piñeiro’s narrative: the lives of ordinary people can be overturned by a dramatic event. In this story, the discovery of a crime reveals to the protagonist that the world in which he lives sustains in appearances. In reality, criminal violence against women is integrated into normal families, and horrific events can happen behind the backs of the rest of the family.

This story has many edges that are worth analysing in relation to the notion explored in ‘Claro y contundente’ that marriage can become a site of oppression and violence against women. To begin with, the protagonist is a good man whose wife, Marina, has left him without explaining, and he is a good father, judging by his affectionate relationship with his son. Hernán remembers his happy childhood in which he was close to his grandfather, who made many repairs in the house and passed to him his vocation for architecture: ‘raise a wall, paint an environment, repair the ceilings’.21 Spanish original: ‘levantar una pared, pintar un ambiente, reparar los techos’; ‘El abuelo Martín’, p. 132. Grandpa Martín once raised a wall in the middle of the living room to ‘cover a pain or fix it forever’.22 Spanish original: ‘tapar un dolor o fijarlo para siempre’; ‘El abuelo Martín’, p. 133. On this wall, Grandpa Martín hung a portrait of his absent wife, Carmiña Núñez, about whom Hernán knows little: ‘A pretty, dark-haired woman, wearing a white lace dress that may have been the one she wore on her wedding day’.23 Spanish original: ‘Una mujer morena, bonita, luciendo un vestido de encaje blanco que tal vez haya sido el que llevó puesto el día de su casamiento’; ‘El abuelo Martín’, p. 133. The only image Hernán has of his absent grandmother is the one hanging on the wall, dressed in a white lace dress, perhaps a wedding dress – a symbol of purity and innocence.

There are rumours about her. Hernán first believed that she was dead: ‘The years passed and Grandpa Martín seemed to continue to be in love with her, clinging to the memory of his dead wife’.24 Spanish original: ‘Pasaban los años y el abuelo Martín parecía seguir enamorado de ella, aferrado al recuerdo de su mujer muerta’; ‘El abuelo Martín’, p. 133. Shortly after, a cousin told him that the woman had gone off with another man: ‘I don’t speak of that woman,’25 Spanish original: ‘De esa mujer yo no hablo’; ‘El abuelo Martín’, p. 133. his mother replied when Hernán asked her, raising a distance with Carmiña Núñez through a stereotype of an evil woman. His grandfather cut off the rumours with a key phrase: ‘Everyone talks, but nobody knows’.26 Spanish original: ‘Todos hablan, pero nadie sabe’; ‘El abuelo Martín’, p. 133. This is precisely what Hernán finds out about his family life: nobody knew anything about Carmiña Núñez and Grandpa Martín. Hernán did not know anything about his family. Ultimately, the discovery of this femicide reveals a society prejudiced against women, who are blamed for all social evils and lack a voice.

By killing his wife and making her body disappear, the grandfather suppressed any affective memory of his wife. After the death of his wife, Grandpa Martín imposed his own image of a man still in love with his absent wife. Yet, the fact that the grandmother’s corpse is wearing her wedding dress indicates something perverse: the grandfather walled Carmiña Núñez up dressed in it in order to preserve her purity, as well as to preserve the idea of her being his property.

Upon striking the wall, Hernán’s tool comes out with ‘a piece of white, dirty and aged lace’,27 Spanish original: ‘un pedazo de encaje blanco, sucio, envejecido’; ‘El abuelo Martín’, p. 134. indicating that criminal violence ended the innocence of the bride. Hernán frees the corpse of his grandmother with his fists: ‘until his grandmother’s dress appears and her skeleton supported by the cloth that prevented it from becoming a bundle of bones’.28 Spanish original: ‘hasta que aparece el vestido de su abuela y su esqueleto sostenido por la tela que impidió que se convirtiera en un manojo de huesos’; ‘El abuelo Martín’, p. 134. A skeleton follows the piece of cloth as the last stronghold of the woman’s body, supported by the tatters of the wedding dress. Ultimately, her innocence is the last stronghold of the assassinated woman’s dignity.

In this story, marriage is again presented as a temple of female oppression and violence against women. Yet, Hernán represents a new generation of men who are educated and have a perception of gender relations that is far from the oppressive dictates of hegemonic masculinity. Hernán’s identity is fragile and unstable and goes through constant evolution due to the unexpected situations he encounters, including the fact his wife (Marina) has left him without explanation.

Piñeiro portrays the precise moment in which Hernán realises that his grandfather killed and hid Hernán’s grandmother’s body: ‘He feels dizzy, as if the air had become addicted to something more than dust, he finds it difficult to breathe. He pauses for a moment, waiting for he doesn’t know what’.29 Spanish original: ‘Siente un mareo, como si el aire se hubiera enviciado con algo más que el polvillo, le cuesta respirar. Se detiene un instante a la espera de no sabe qué’; ‘El abuelo Martín’, pp. 134–35. Hernán feels short of breath, as if he were living the situation of his grandmother. He realises the duality that has accompanied him throughout his life: a criminal act caused his grandmother to be silenced, yet the woman had been present, dividing the living room and now Hernán’s life in two.

He turns his eyes to his son, Nicolás, who represents hope for the future: ‘He looks for light by looking through the window. Nicolás has just jumped out of the hammock and is coming home’.30 Spanish original: ‘Busca luz mirando a través de la ventana. Nicolás acaba de saltar de la hamaca y viene hacia casa’; ‘El abuelo Martín’, p. 135. Nicolás represents a new generation and an alternative to violent hegemonic masculinity from those who, like his grandfather, treat women’s bodies as their property.

Narrated in the first person, ‘Un zapato y tres plumas’ (pp. 81–91) describes the return of a young man to his hometown, Unquito, 20 years after he left after suffering paternal violence and with the promise of never coming back. The protagonist, whose name is not revealed, returns for work. He reveals the reasons that made him leave the town, as well as his older brother, José, who is retarded, and his father, Don Rivera, a macho and violent man who owns a bicycle shop. Don Rivera is a strong man, despite wearing an orthopaedic shoe, who had established a repressive environment at home against the protagonist’s mother, who died when he was eight years old, and the two sons. The protagonist remembers that Don Rivera had forbidden the family members from laughing at home, with the excuse that the mother could suffer an asthma attack. However, the mother and the two sons managed to circumvent the repression by tickling the soles of their feet with three feathers. Twenty years after his departure, the protagonist returns to finish subverting the order imposed by the father over the children and the dead mother.

Several key themes of Piñeiro’s narrative therefore converge in this story (silence, memory, the repressive system, gender-based violence and parental/filial violence) in an apparently normal family environment in which nothing is as it initially seems. There is also a violent event, the death of the mother, which triggers the events at the return of the youngest son many years later. In relation to violence against women, there is again the figure of a cruel elderly man who imposes his order on his wife and sons.

‘Un zapato y tres plumas’ therefore tells two stories: on the one hand, it tells the story of an oppressed family under the mandate of the father figure, Don Rivera, which ended in the worst possible way when the mother died by being suffocated under him. In the Rivera home, parental/institutional violence subdued and killed the mother first and then expelled one of the children. On the other hand, it tells the story of how a dissident returns and challenges the repressive system that had terrified him throughout his childhood. In this sense, the Rivera home is a metaphor for the repression and political violence under Videla. Piñeiro sends a message with this story: despite being silenced, dissidence exists and can come back at any time and stand up to a system dominated by amnesia and hidden violence. The protagonist materialises his dissidence in front of the repressive element, Don Rivera, demonstrating his power.

Let us see how Piñeiro carries out all of this. From the beginning of the story, the protagonist indicates that things have changed for him. However, things have changed only in relation to his own view of life and, above all, his fear of his father. At his return, nothing seems to have changed in his family home. The following fragment illustrates the dynamics of violence and repression in the Rivera home during the protagonist’s childhood:

Along with laughter, the death of the mother shows evidence of the family home being a repressive environment. Particularly revealing is the way in which the mother was crushed to death under the father’s body: ‘I remembered the night I heard her moan and cough while he gasped. I remembered the fear I felt and how I kept getting smaller in bed’.37 Spanish original: ‘Me acordé de la noche que la oí quejarse y toser mientras él jadeaba. Me acordé del miedo que sentía y de cómo me iba haciendo cada vez más chico en la cama’; ‘Un zapato y tres plumas’, p. 87. The children found her ‘naked, dead’.38 Spanish original: ‘desnuda, muerta’; ‘Un zapato y tres plumas’, p. 87. The image of the dead mother is representative of the last consequences of a repressive State: how it suffocates the oppressed and appropriates their identities and bodies.

The return of the son shows that it is possible to subvert repressive forces and change the reality. It also shows that identities are fragile and in constant evolution but have the ability to recover. In this regard, dissidence in the stories of Quién no is a necessary asset to advance in life, as it is a necessary component for a change in the social reality of the country.