Otra vez el Santo

In my not so daring quest to become more familiar with contemporary Latin American literature, I came across the late Rafael Ramirez Heredia's collection of stories Otra vez el Santo. Today I finally finished it, and I'm a fan. Throughout the collection, characters/narrators show an inability to discern between the past and present, reality and fantasy. In the title story, the narrator, a young teen on vacation with friends, is determined to see el Santo, a Mexican wrestler/movie star, and is convinced a girl showing romantic interest in him is part of el Santo’s superhero entourage. In another story, the narrator is unsure what to call the young wife of his godfather/adoptive father, should he call her step-mother or godmother? This becomes especially confusing to him when she (step-mother/godmother) begins to dance nude in front of him.

Memory is the prominent motif in Heredia’s collection. Narrators hang on to memory as they try to negotiate the actual world, and the present. In hanging on to memory, these narrators remain children, in one way or another; their immaturities may lead them to disaster, but also, through their immaturities, by lingering in moments of the past, they survive. Here’s a wonderful paragraph (which I poorly translated into English) in the closing story that I think illustrates this:

"My age of eleven years only serves to accept that little children are the ones with the obligation to remember, adults seem to be tied to other preoccupations, their visions are not centered on the color of the breeze or the scent of the sky, those big for their age don't enjoy counting the seagulls nor do they give any importance to the looks of girls, and someone, the youngest, me, must be the voice of memory which invades when I feel the cold breeze through air conditioners, and the pines which will fill the empty mood that stays with me before the winter becomes longer, so aggressive and vast."