Nazi Literature in the Americas (New Directions Paperbook)

by Bolaño, Roberto

Gabino Barreda. Hermosillo, 1908–Los Angeles, 1989. Renowned architect. He began as a Stalinist and ended as a Salinist, supporting Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

  Tatiana von Beck Iraola. Santiago, 1950–Santiago, 2011. Feminist, gallery owner, journalist, conceptual sculptor, one of the pillars of Chilean cultural life.

  Luis Enrique Belmar. Buenos Aires, 1865–Buenos Aires, 1940. Literary critic. He declared that Macedonio Fernández couldn’t write to save his life. Savage in his treatment of Edelmira Thompson.

  Hugo Bossi. Buenos Aires, 1920–Buenos Aires, 1991. Architect. Creator of the Museum-Hotel projects, which were, he confessed, inspired by his years as a boarder at a Jesuit school in the Province of Buenos Aires. The Museum-Hotel, as well as being a museum open to the public and a residence for artists in need, was to have various subterranean sports grounds, a velodrome, a cinema, two theaters, a chapel, a supermarket, and a small, discreet police station.

  Jack Brooke. New Jersey, 1950–Los Angeles, 1990. Art dealer associated with the drug trade and money-laundering. Declaimer and quick-change artist in his spare time.

  Mauricio Cáceres. Tres Arroyos, 1925–Buenos Aires, 1996. Second husband of Luz Mendiluce. Popularly known as The Martín Fierro of the Apocalypse. Onetime editor of American Letters.

  Florencio Capó. Concepción, 1920–Santiago, 1995. Friend and confidant of Pedro González Carrera. Although very fond of González, he could never understand his friend’s posthumous fame.

  Dan Carmine. Los Angeles, 1958–Los Angeles, 1986. Extremely well-endowed porn actor. His penis was eleven and a half inches long. He had the bluest eyes in the business, and worked in several of Adolfo Pantoliano’s films.

  Aldo Carozzone. Buenos Aires, 1893–Buenos Aires, 1982. Epicurean philosopher and private secretary to Edelmira Thompson.

  Edelmiro Carozzone. Buenos Aires, 1940–Madrid, 2027.The only child of Aldo Carozzone. He was originally to be named Adolfo (after Adolph Hilter), but at the last minute, his father chose instead the name of his employer and benefactor, as a mark of his devoted friendship. As a boy he was perpetually amazed and fitfully happy. He later worked as a secretary to the Mendiluce family.

  John Castellano. Mobile 1950–Selma, 2021. North American writer. Dubbed The Duce of Alabama by Argentino Schiaffino.

  Enzo Raúl Castiglioni. Buenos Aires, 1940–Buenos Aires, 2002. Leader of the Boca Juniors soccer gang. When he was imprisoned, his place was taken by Italo Schiaffino. Closely resembled a rat, according to some of his contemporaries. A hybrid of rat and peacock, according to others. A pathetic loser, in the opinion of his family.

  Juan Cherniakovski. Valdivia, 1943–El Salvador, 1984. Panamerican poet and guerrila fighter. Second cousin of the Soviet general Ivan Cherniakovski.

  Arthur Crane. New Orleans, 1947–Los Angeles, 1989. Poet. Author of a number of important books, including Homosexual Heaven and Disciplining Children. He indulged his suicidal tendencies by frequenting the underworld and hanging out with lowlifes. Others smoke three packs of cigarettes a day.

  Eugenio Entrescu. Bacau, Rumania, 1905–Kishinev, Ukraine, 1944. Rumanian General. During the Second World War he distinguished himself in the capture of Odessa, the Siege of Sebastopol and the Battle of Stalingrad. Erect, his member was exactly twelve inches long, half an inch longer than that of Dan Carmine. He commanded the 20th Division, the 14th Division and the 3rd Infantry Corps. His soldiers crucified him in a village near Kishinev.

  Atilio Franchetti. Buenos Aires, 1919–Buenos Aires, 1990. Painter who took part in the Poe’s Room project.

  Persio de la Fuente. Buenos Aires, 1919–Buenos Aires, 1990. Argentinean colonel and eminent semiologist.

  Honesto García. Buenos Aires, 1950–Buenos Aires, 2013. Onetime hit man and leader of the Boca soccer gang. Died a beggar, bawling tangos, crying and shitting in his pants in an out-of-the-way street in Villa Devoto.

  Martín García. Los Angeles, Chile, 1942–Perpignan, 1989. Chilean poet and translator. His writing workshop held in the Concepción medical faculty was one of the world’s most disgusting phenomena: two steps away, across the corridor, was the operating theater where the anatomy students were dissecting corpses.

  María Teresa Greco. New Jersey, 1936–Orlando, 2004. Argentino Schiaffino’s second wife. According to eye-witnesses she was tall, thin and bony, a sort of ghost or incarnation of the will.

  Wenceslao Hassel. Pando, Uruguay, 1900–Montevideo, 1958. Playwright. Author of America’s Domestic Wars, How to Be a Man, Ferocity, Argentinean Women in Paris and other plays, applauded in their day by theater audiences in Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Santiago de Chile.

  Otto Haushofer. Berlin, 1871–Berlin, 1945. Nazi philosopher. Godfather of Luz Mendiluce and father of various harebrained theories: hollow earth, solid universe, original civilizations, the interplanetary Aryan tribe. He committed suicide after being raped by three drunk Uzbek soldiers.

  Antonio Lacouture. Buenos Aires, 1943–Buenos Aires, 1999. Argentinean military officer. He defeated subversives but lost the Falklands. An expert in the “submarine” technique and the application of electrodes. He invented a game using mice. The sound of his voice made prisoners tremble. He received various decorations.

  Julio César Lacouture. Buenos Aires, 1927–Buenos Aires, 1984. Luz Mendiluce’s first husband. Author of an “Ode to San Martín” and an “Ode to O’Higgins,” which both won municipal prizes.

  Juan José Lasa Mardones. Cuban poet whose life is a mystery, with scattered poems to his name. Possibly invented by Ernesto Pérez Masón.

  Philippe Lemercier. Nevers, 1925–Buenos Aires, 1984. French landscape painter and editor of Ignacio Zubieta’s posthumous works.

  Juan Carlos Lentini. Buenos Aires, 1945–Buenos Aires, 2008. Onetime soccer gang leader. He finished his days as a federal government employee.

  Carola Leyva. Mar del Plata, 1945–Mar del Plata, 2018. Argentinean poet and follower of Edelmira Thompson and

  Luz Mendiluce.

  Susana Lezcano Lafinur. Buenos Aires, 1867–Buenos Aires, 1949. Hostess. Her salon was one of the institutions of cultural life in Buenos Aires.

  Marcus Long. Pittsburgh, 1928–Phoenix, 1989. Poet whose work successively resembled that of Charles Olson, Robert Lowell, W. S. Merwin, Kenneth Rexroth and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Literature professor. Father of Rory Long.

  Cecilio Macaduck. Concepción, 1956–Santiago, 2021. Chilean writer whose curious work, characterized by abundant detail and ominous atmospheres, has won him an enthusiastic following among critics and general readers. Until the age of thirty-three he worked as a sales assistant in a

  shoe store.

  Berta Macchio Morazán. Buenos Aires, 1960–Mar del Plata, 2029. Amateur illustrator. Niece and lover of Dr. Morazán. Also the lover of Argentino Schiaffino. Highly strung. Her relationships with the aforementioned individuals resulted in committal to an insane asylum and several suicide attempts. Doctor Morazán liked to tie her to the bed or to a chair. Argentino Schiaffino preferred the more traditional slaps, or stubbing out cigarettes on her arms and legs. She was also the lover of Scotti Cabello and occasionally eight or nine long-time members of the Boca soccer gang. Morazán always said that he loved her like a daughter.

  Alfredo de María. Mexico City, 1962–Villaviciosa, 2022. Science fiction writer. Gustavo Borda’s neighbor in Los Angeles for two interminable years. Disappeared in Villaviciosa, a village of killers in the state of Sonora.

  Pedro de Medina. Guadalajara, 1920–Mexico City, 1989. Mexican novelist whose themes were the revolution and the rural poor.

  Sebastián Mendiluce. Buenos Aires, 1874–Buenos Aires, 1940. Argentinean millionaire. Husband of Edelmira Thompson.

  Carlos Enrique Morazán. Buenos Aires, 1940–Buenos Aires, 2004. Leader of the Boca soccer gang after the death of Italo Schiaffino and devoted admirer of Italo’s younger brother Argentino. Doctor of parapsychology.

  Elizabeth Moreno. Miami, 1974–Miami, 2040. Waitress in a Cuban café. Third and la
st wife of Argentino Schiaffino.

  Adolfo Pantoliano. Vallejo, California, 1945–Los Angeles, 1986. Director and producer of pornographic movies. Works: Hot Bunnies, Stick It In My Ass, The Ex-Cons and the Horny Fifteen-Year-Old, Three By Three, and Alien Versus Corina, among others.

  Agustín Pérez Heredia. Buenos Aires, 1935–Buenos Aires, 2005. Argentinean Fascist associated with the world of sport.

  Jorge Esteban Petrovich. Buenos Aires, 1960–Buenos Aires, 2027. Author of three war novels set in the Falklands. Radio and television presenter in later life.

  Jules Albert Ramis. Rouen, 1910–Paris, 1995. Prize-winning French poet. Held an official post in Petain’s government. Revisionist. Sporadic and gifted translator from English and Spanish. Member of Parliament. Philosopher in his spare time. Patron of the arts. Founder of the Mandarins’ Club.

  Julián Rico Anaya. Junín, 1942–Buenos Aires, 1998. Argentinean author. Nationalist and ultra-Catholic.

  Baldwin Rocha. Los Angeles, 1999–Laguna Beach, 2017. Killed Rory Long with an assault rifle. Died three minutes later under a hail of gunfire from Long’s bodyguards.

  Abel Romero. Puerto Montt, 1940–Santiago, 2013. Chilean ex-policeman who spent many years in exile. On his return he established a successful firm of funeral directors.

  Étienne de Saint Étienne. Lyon, 1920–Paris, 1999. French philosopher and revisionist historian. Founder of The Review of Contemporary History.

  Claudia Saldaña. Rosario, 1955–Rosario, 1976. Argentinean poet. Unpublished. Killed by the military regime.

  Ximena San Diego. Buenos Aires, 1870–Paris, 1938. Fossilized gaucho version of Nina de Villard.

  Lou Santino. San Bernadino, 1940–San Bernadino, 2006. John Lee Brook’s parole officer. According to some, Brook among them, a saint. According to others, a cynical son of a bitch.

  Germán Scotti Cabello. Buenos Aires, 1956–Buenos Aires, 2017. Dr. Morazán’s right-hand man and unconditional admirer of Argentino Schiaffino.

  André Thibault. Niort, 1880–Périgueux, 1945. Philosopher and follower of Maurras. Executed by a group of resistance fighters in the Périgord.

  Alcides Urrutia. Cuban painter of whom nothing more is known. Likely guest in Castro’s jails. Another of Ernesto Pérez Masón’s inventions?

  Tito Vásquez. Rosario, 1895–Río de Janeiro, 1957. Argentinean musician. Composer of symphonies, various chamber works, three hymns, a funeral march, a sonatina, and eight tangos that permitted him to live out his days in dignity.

  Arturo Velasco. Buenos Aires, 1921–Paris, 1983. Argentinean painter. He began as a Symbolist and ended up imitating Le Parc.

  Magdalena Venegas. Nacimiento, 1955–Concepción, 1973. Chilean poet. Twin sister of María Venegas. Killed by the military regime.

  María Venegas. Nacimiento, 1955–Concepción, 1973. Chilean poet. Killed by the military regime.

  Susy Webster. Berkeley, 1960–Los Angeles, 1986. Porn star. Worked in several of of Adolfo Pantoliano’s films.

  Curzio Zabaleta. Santiago, 1951–Viña del Mar, 2011. Retired Chilean Air Force captain. Lay monk. Author of bucolic and ecological works.

  Augusto Zamora. San Luis Potosí, 1919–Mexico City, 1969. Known as a social-realist author, although he wrote surrealist poems in secret. He was homosexual, although he kept up a macho pretence almost all his life. For more than twenty years he fooled his colleagues into believing that he could speak Russian. He saw the light in 1968, in a cell in the Lecumberri prison. He died in the street of a heart attack a month after being released.

  2. PUBLISHING HOUSES, MAGAZINES, PLACES . . .

  American Letters. Bimonthly magazine founded by Edelmira Thompson, 1948-1979. It was co-edited by Juan and Luz Mendiluce, which gave rise to inter-sibling quarrels.

  Black and White. Extreme right-wing Argentinean publishing house.

  Black Pistol. Publishing house based in Rio de Janeiro, specializing in detective fiction, which opened the door to a large and disparate group of Brazilian writers.

  The Charismatic Church of Californian Christians. Religious congregation founded by Rory Long in 1984.

  The Chestnut. Argentinean publishing house specializing in songbooks and popular authors.

  Church of the True Martyrs of America. Religious congregation in which Rory Long was a preacher.

  City in Flames. Poetry publishing house based in Macon.

  Command. War games magazine to which Harry Sibelius contributed.

  Dawn in California. One of the Aryan Brotherhood’s magazines.

  The Fabulous Adventures of the White Nation. One of the Aryan brotherhood’s magazines.

  The Fourth Reich in Argentina. No doubt one of the most peculiar, outlandish and stubborn publishing ventures spawned by the Americas, ever fecund in enterprises verging on insanity, illegality and idiocy. The topical first issue was entirely devoted to refuting the legality of the Nuremberg trials, which were in full swing at the time. In the second issue, among translations of entirely forgettable German authors (including a poem about gardenias by Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler Youth, then on trial in Nuremberg for crimes against humanity), the enterprising reader may discover three disparate prose texts by Ernst Jünger. A double issue followed, returning to the theme of the trials and presenting a brief anthology of conspicuously Falangist and Peronist poets from Buenos Aires. The hundred pages of the fifth issue are entirely occupied by an exposé and analysis of the Bolshevik menace, the only real threat to Europe since the end of the First World War. With the sixth issue, the style of the magazine took a new turn: the theme is old Buenos Aires and its neighborhoods, the port, the river, the city’s traditions and folklore. In a fit of speculation, the seventh issue envisaged the Buenos Aires of the future, its urban planning (imagined by the young architect Hugo Bossi, with the first glimmers of an implacable originality that would later make him world famous), but also its sociology, economics and politics. The eighth issue came down to earth again, railing, from cover to cover, against the fallacies of the Nuremberg trials and the total control of the press by the Jewish plutocracy. The ninth issue returned to literature: under the title “European Literature Today,” it gives a brief overview of the works of French, German, Italian, Spanish, Rumanian, Lithuanian, Slovakian, Hungarian, Belgian, Latvian and Danish writers and poets. A police warrant prevented the publication of the tenth issue. The magazine was outlawed but transformed itself into a publishing house. Some titles appeared under the imprint of the Fourth Reich in Argentina, but the majority did not. In its new guise the Fourth Reich continued to make its erratic way until the year 2001. The identity of the publisher remains a mystery.

  The General. War games magazine to which Harry Sibelius contributed.

  History and Thought. Chilean magazine whose early issues contained articles and essays on European and American geopolitics and military history. Under the editorship of Gunther Füchler, no doubt the magazine’s most ambitious and inventive editor, History and Thought attempted to launch the careers of a series of German-Chilean novelists and short-story writers (Axel Axelrod, Basilio Rodríguez de la Mata, Herman Cueto Bauer, Otto Munsen, Rodolfo Ernesto Gruber, etc.) with results that were initially mixed but constituted overall and in the end a resounding flop: only two of the authors persisted in their literary endeavors beyond the age of twenty-five, one of them opting to write in German, and, unsurprisingly, in Germany. The magazine’s first editor, J.C. Hoeffler, was responsible for a Public History of the Second World War, followed by a Secret History of the Second World War, not to mention the first respectable Spanish translation of Baldur von Schirach’s Selected Poems. Werner Méndez Maier, editor from 1979 to 1980, a ferocious futurist whose ready fists drove away the editorial board and the magazine’s sponsors, was the author of the controversial Lieutenant Ramírez Hoffman: News from Reliable Sources, which at the time was considered by friends and enemies alike as a monumental and quasi-schizophrenic exercise in leg-pulling. Gunther Füchler, the third editor (from 1
980 to 1989), was the author of an enormous History of Pacific War, devoted to the conflict between Chile and the alliance of Peru and Bolivia in 1879, a 740-page tome aspiring to exhaustiveness, which includes minute descriptions of everything from the uniforms of both sides to the strategic, operational and tactical battle plans. In 1997 the National Literary Prize was awarded to Füchler in recognition of his historical labors, a high point in the career of the magazine’s most respected general editor. Under Karl-Heinz Riddle, History and Thought entered a more openly revisionist phase. It was influenced by the thinking and theories of the French philosopher Étienne de Saint-Étienne, a controversial professor at the University of Lyon, who tried to use historical documents (including dubious permits for the opening of kosher butchers’ shops) to prove that only 300,000 Jews had died in all the concentration camps during the Second World War. Following in Saint-Étienne’s footsteps, Riddle produced a miscellaneous series of eccentric articles in which the historico-mathematical-enumerative system was taken to its ultimate consequences. The decline which had shown early signs in Riddle’s time was finally confirmed under the editorship of Antonio Capistrano (1998–2003), a poet in the Georgian style, formerly associated with the Southern Hemisphere Literary Review, whose sole quality was administrative efficiency. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the German-Chilean axis was no longer able to provide funds or generate enthusiasm, and the die-hards continued their crusade on the information superhighways.

  The Hotel of the Brave. One of the Aryan Brotherhood’s magazines.

  The Inner Circle. One of the Aryan Brotherhood’s magazines.

  Iron Heart. Chilean Nazi magazine which survived for a number of years not in an Antarctic submarine base, as its ardent instigators would have preferred, but in Punta Arenas.

  Lamp of the South. Publishing house founded by Edelmira Thompson. 1920–1946. Never made a cent.

  Literature behind Bars. One of the Aryan Brotherhood’s magazines.

  Living Poetry. Literary magazine published in Cartagena, Spain, 1938–1947.