Argentina as Faust

Virginia Guevara, one of Las viudas de los jueves’ two main narrators, arrives with her family at Altos de la Cascada after having got a real bargain (un negocio redondo) on a house whose owner, Antieri, a reclusive military man whose name curiously resembles Galtieri, Argentina’s de facto president during the country’s murderous last military dictatorship, committed suicide. Profiting from tragedy is a recurrent theme: not only does the enthusiasm with which Virginia negociate the transaction lead her to a thriving real-estate career built on the financial woes, job losses and marital breakdowns of her clients, but the insistence of one of her neighbours, that one should take advantage of the incredibly cheap New York hotel deals following 9/11, reminds us of our own self-interested motives—who didn’t think of popping down to post-crisis Argentina for a holiday, when the cost of living plummeted and bargains were to be had aplenty to holders of strong currencies? Hay que aprovechar. The novel opens with a fictional suicide that not only resonates with the recent past, but also forshadows the collective suicide of its dénouement, itself analogous to the near destruction of a once prosperous country having sought immediate happiness through a Faustian bargain with the US dollar and having paid a heavy price. When visiting Antieri’s house for the first time, Virginia finds empty bookcovers of Goethe’s masterpiece, which suggests a willed ignorance of the consequences of commerce with the devil, or, in Argentina’s case, with the International Monetary Fund.