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5 Changing the World

The Censors

Luisa Valenzuela
Translation by Frank Thomas Smith
Luisa Valenzuela (b. 1938) is an Argentine novelist and short story
writer, who began her career as a journalist in Buenos Aires and
published her first story when she was seventeen. She is one of JAVIER LIRA/Notimex/Newscom
Argentina’s most significant writers, best known for her experimental
style, her work being classified as “magical realism.” She is best exploring other genres
known for her work written in response to the military dictatorship
that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, and remains one of the most widely translated
female South American writers. This story was originally published in a collection of her
short stories in 1976.

oor Juan! He was caught off guard that day through the vast censorship bureaus and that
Pand he couldn’t realize that what he few finally pass the tests and are able to continue
thought was a stroke of luck was really an their journey. Usually it’s a question of months,
accursed trick of fate. Those things happen years if complications arise, a long time in which
when you’re not careful, and as sure as you’re the freedom and perhaps even the life of the
hearing me one gets careless very, very often. sender and receiver are in suspense. And that’s
Juancito let happiness — an otherwise what has our Juan so deeply depressed: the idea
disturbing sentiment — overwhelm him when, that something could happen to Mariana, in
from a confidential source, he received Paris, through his fault. Mariana, of all people,
Mariana’s new address, now in Paris, and he who must feel so safe, so at ease there where she
knew that she hadn’t forgotten him. Without always dreamed of living. But he knows that the
thinking twice, he sat down at his desk and Secret Commandos of Censorship operate the
wrote a letter. The letter. The same one that now world over and are granted a large discount on
prevents him from concentrating on his work airline fares; therefore there’s nothing to prevent
during the day and doesn’t let him sleep when them from going even to the darkest Paris
night comes (what did he put in that letter, what quartier, kidnap Mariana and go home
had stuck to that sheet of paper that he sent to convinced of the nobility of their earthly
Mariana?) mission.
Juan knew there wouldn’t be any problem So you have to outsmart them, you have
with the text, that the text is irreproachable, to do what everyone does: try to sabotage the
innocuous. But the rest? He knows that they mechanism, throw sand in the gears, that is,
probe the letters, sniff them, feel them, read go to the source of the problem in order to
between the lines and their insignificant obstruct it.
punctuation, even the accidental stains. He That was the plan when Juan, like so many
knows that the letters pass from hand to hand others, applied to be a censor. Not because of

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Copyright © Bedford/St. Martin’s. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter.
Distributed by BFW Publishers. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution.

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