Narrating Urban Alterity in a Neoliberal Age: Sylvia Iparraguirre’s El muchacho de los senos de goma

Argentine literary narrative treating the social effects of the period of neoliberalism circa the turn of the 21st century has given us such works as César Aira’s La villa (2001) and Las noches de Flores (2004), Tomás Eloy Martínez’s El vuelo de la reina (2002), Antonio Dal Masetto’s Crónicas argentinas (2003), and Martín Kohan’s Cuentas pendientes (2010). In her novel El muchacho de los senos de goma (2007) Sylvia Iparraguirre¹ offers her own vision of these selfsame effects with her realistic account of the urban phenomena of alterity or “otherness” through the marginalized and exclusionary plight of her adolescent protagonist on the streets of metropolitan Buenos Aires in the year 1995. Iparraguirre’s narrative distinguishes itself not only for its structural ingenuity and sociocultural profundity, but also for its capacity to aesthetically intertwine the precarious circumstances of her main character with the portrayal of the ramifications of economic globalization, in particular that of blatant and diametrical socioeconomic inequalities among the city’s residents. The profesional web page of the author provides understanding on this matter: “Escrita con la prosa diáfana y sutil que distingue a Sylvia Iparraguirre, la novela condensa en sus páginas las contradicciones del mundo urbano de hoy, atravesado por infinitos mensajes y donde, al mismo tiempo, la posibilidad de comunicarse encuentra sus límites y los personajes se enfrentan a la irreductible soledad de su condición.”² Against a descriptive backdrop of urban complexities that undoubtedly transcend the area of Buenos Aires, Iparraguirre narrates the tragic state of her desperate character “Cris” through a lucid and verisimilar style of prose that reflects the humiliating experience of alterity amid the polarizing forces of transnational capitalism. In this regard, it can be argued that at least one of Iparraguirre’s target audiences is the urban masses of Argentina’s capital that have been adversely affected by the advent of neoliberalism during the years of menenismo.³

The socioeconomic conditions of the Argentine populace in the decade immediately preceding the new millennium serve as an integral contextual component for the proposed analysis of the novel. In the period in question Argentina suffered a composite division that had gravely harmful implications for the nation’s societal cohesion and coherence. Among the repercussions of this fractionalization was a severe widening of the economic gap between the wealthy and impoverished that was aggravated by the phenomenon of the “new poors;”⁴ that is to say, those of the middle class that suddenly became victims to a greater or lesser degree of a crushing indigence. Alejandro Grimson and Gabriel Kessler affirm: “The newly impoverished came to include the middle class when their income dropped below the poverty line. Their sociodemographic and cultural profile was different from that of the structurally poor, as were their needs and habitat—they were to be found scattered around urban areas” (76). It should be noted that Iparraguirre employs her text to call attention towards the plight of these “new poors” located within the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires instead of the situation of the “structurally poor,” these understood as: “households with a long history of unsatisfied needs, usually located in determined hábitats like temporary settlements and suburban ghettos or villas miseria” (Grimson and Kessler 76). The blatant income inequality in question had eminently adverse effects for Argentina’s newly pauperized, among which were: “marginación, exclusión, pérdida de identidad, despojo de subjetividad” (Bleichmar 185). Maristella Svampa adds with respect to the era of Argentine neoliberalism, defining this period as: “la configuración de una sociedad excluyente, caracterizada por el ensanchamiento de las distancias sociales y la multiplicación de las desigualdades” (393). Marcos Aguinis describes the neoliberal age as an appalling relapse from Argentina’s former economic puissance at the turn of the 20^th century, while lamenting: “¿Cuántos puestos de trabajo se han perdido, cuánta hambre, exclusión, analfabetismo, mala atención sanitaria y deterioro de la calidad de vida significa ese retroceso?” (El atroz encanto 2...