Pérez-Reverte’s Double Witnessing in Territorio Comanche

Who is a witness? In what circumstances can one be a witness? Philosopher Giorgio Agamben understands “bearing witness” as an act that can make one survive, and states that some will survive simply based on the desire and the need to bear witness, while others will simply remain silent. For Agamben, Primo Levi is an example of someone who turns himself into a writer in order to survive. In fact, many authors consider the act of writing to be the ultimate way of bearing witness, especially by writing fiction, as it has a Truth function that reaches beyond the evidential, juridical truth. Agamben further emphasizes the two meanings of “witness” in Latin, “The first word, testis, from which our word ‘testimony’ derives, etymologically signifies the person who, in a trial or lawsuit between two rival parties, is in the position of a third party (terstis). The second word, superstes, designates a person who has lived through something, who has experienced an event from beginning to end and can therefore bear witness to it” (17). Considering this understanding of the witness, here I examine Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s novel Territorio Comanche (1994) as an object that turns professional third-party witnessing (journalism) into a superstes witness who then ultimately becomes a double witness. In other terms, a war journalist who comes to the battlefield as a kind of visitor, an outside participant, or a guest, and experiences the fear and atrocity of the event with his own body, thus becomes an equal part of the environment, like the soldiers and the suffering civilians, who are at home in this environment – or the hosts.

The reader discovers Pérez-Reverte’s own trauma, an undercurrent present throughout the text, expressed through his protagonist, Barlés, who avoids thinking of himself as traumatized by war even though he suffers from flashbacks from other wars in which he has been. Territorio Comanche portrays journalists as lost souls who have to fight for their own survival, as well as Western subjects who have an ethical responsibility toward the suffering Other in this war.

Arturo Pérez-Reverte (1953-), a well-established, best-selling Spanish author and journalist, and a member of the Real Academia Española, has reported on war around the world. He has also written various novels dealing with a wide range of topics; however, Territorio Comanche is his only literary piece that fits into the genre of journalistic fiction. While writing this novel during the years 1993 and 1994, Pérez-Reverte found himself on the battlefields of Bosnia accompanied by his cameraman from TVE (Televisión Española) and other members of the press including the photographer Gervasio Sánchez. Most recently, his membership in the Real Academia Española, has, according to some critics, earned him the status of an author ‘worthy’ of literary criticism, elevating him into a category above the marketable best-seller.

The plot of Territorio Comanche begins with two TVE journalists waiting for a bridge to detonate on the front lines of Bijelo Polje in Bosnia. The cameraman finds himself obsessed with obtaining the perfect shot of the impending destruction of the bridge. Within this frame, the story interlaces flashback scenes in which secondary characters appear depicting various wars in which they have participated. The central focus of the novel involving the struggle of the timing to obtain an image is very characteristic of war, and finally, upon succeeding in this suspenseful task, the plot concludes. The protagonist returns then to Spain, and gives a conference on the Bosnian war, a position from which he provides his analysis and critique of violence to the reader. He acts as the third party witness who has become the second party witness in a sense, a social actor participating in the violence in addition to being the guest voyeur.

The title of the novel is, to say the least, attention-grabbing, however, it is not necessarily suggestive of a specific topic and lacks a direct reference to the plot. By evading specificity in his title, Pérez-Reverte does not invite any preconceptions...