“Ningún lugar sagrado” de Rodrigo Rey Rosa: una ficción paranoica desde la diáspora centroamericana

Abstract

This paper analyzes “Ningún lugar sagrado” (1998) by the Guatemalan writer Rodrigo Rey Rosa as a ‘ficción paranoica’ (“La ficción paranoica”, Clarín, 10 de octubre de 1991; Blanco nocturno, Anagrama, Barcelona, 2010). I will explain that Rey Rosa’s short story does not include univocal clues to identify the protagonist as an unreliable narrator whose overinterpretations give rise to a misrepresentation of the facts. According to my reading of “Ningún lugar sagrado”, the paranoiac features of the main character contribute to the ambiguity of the text that, in fact, never explicitly confirms or discredits his persecutory ideas. Following this line of argument, I suggest that Rey Rosa’s short story narrates an “imaginario de amenaza” (“La ficción paranoica”, Clarín, 10 de octubre de 1991) that, alluding to the climate of repression, intrigues and complicities in postwar Guatemala, generates paranoia –including that of the reader. “Ningún lugar sagrado” points to a more general tendency in recent Central American literature that, from the realm of fiction, highlights the widespread nature of paranoia in the region. Unlike social discourses that discuss the topic, these literary texts make use of narrative techniques that do not necessarily respond to a referential notion of truth (including hyperboles, digressions, irony and narrative ambiguity), when constructing the voice of a paranoiac character. According to my perspective, such narrative techniques lend themselves especially to capturing the alienating dimensions of violence in Central America where paranoia, rather than being a question of truth or exaggeration, constitutes a survival strategy.