Meksyk nawiedzony przez historię (Las paredes hablan Carmen Boullosy)

Anna Gryglaszewska in the article Mexico haunted by history (“Las paredes hablan” by Carmen Boullosa) offers an analysis of historiographical meta-novel written by a contemporary Latin American writer. Carmen Boullosa, using the theme of haunting of the present by the past, returns to some dramatic events in the history of her homeland which had a huge impact on the lives of many generations of her compatriots. The beginning of the Mexican’s war for the independence from Spain and the bloody and full of victims revolution of 1910 are, without a doubt, the facts that have shaped the Mexican identity. Boullosa, telling the story of an impossible love three times, reinterpretated of these events, making them an important background for the action of heroes of this novel. Gryglaszewska, analyzing the novel, argues that the myth, understood by Mircea Eliade as a story rooted in the collective unconscious of humanity, serves as a base for Boullosa’s fiction pivoted around the history of Mexico. According to the Aztec mythology, gods, so that the world could exist, demand human blood. This is the reason why the bloody history of the writer’s homeland is marked by the stigma of suffering.