Testimonio and Postmodernism

More than any other form of writing in Latin America, the testimonio has contributed to the demise of the traditional role of the intellectual/artist as spokesperson for the voiceless. As some major writers-most notably Octavio Paz and Mario Vargas Llosa-increasingly take neoconservative positions and as the subordinated and oppressed feel more enabled to opt to speak for themselves in the wake of the new social movements, Liberation Theology, and other consciousness-raising grass-roots movements, there is less of a social and cultural imperative for concerned writers to heroically assume the grievances and demands of the oppressed, as in Pablo Neruda's Alturas de Macchu Picchu ([1946] 1955) From across the earth bring together/all the silenced scattered lips/and from the depths speak to me . . . Speak through my words and my blood (38-39). In contrast, the testimonialista gives his or her personal testimony directly, addressing a specific interlocutor. As in the works of Elvia Alvarado (1987), Rigoberta Menchut (1983), and Domitila Barrios de Chungara (1977), that personal story is a shared one with the community to which the testimonialista belongs. The speaker does not speak for or represent a community but rather performs an act of identity-formation which is simultaneously personal and collective. For example, Domitila Barrios (1977: 13) tells Moema Viezzer, her interlocutor: