Pedagogy of forgetfulness. Chronicles and strategies of the invisible genocide by Marcelo Valko. A decolonial history

Abstract

Perhaps there is no country in Our America more slandered by the heyday of nineteenth-century Eurocentrism than Argentina. The above statement does not imply an exaggeration if it is considered that from the romantics of the River Plate (Echeverría, Sarmiento, Mármol, Hernández) the cliché that understands and expresses the American is constituted as an anachronism of history that must be eradicated for the sake of progress considered to the European model. Perhaps there is no country as imprisoned by this mirage as Argentina if one thinks that a century after the romantics, the thinkers of the national idiosyncrasy, Martínez Estrada or Scalabrini Ortiz, to cite two examples, the consideration of the indigenous in terms of his cultural fit in the identity mosaic of the country is omitted from the vast field of his reflections. Belligerent omission that, of course, reaches Borges, but also other paradigms of Argentine literature such as Sábato, Cortázar or Marechal himself.