Avatares de una cabeza en la picota: los restos insepultos como significante en disputa en algunos textos de José Rivera Indarte

Abstract

This article analyses a set of texts of the Argentine writer José Rivera Indarte (1814-1845) with the objective of exploring the sinister representations of Juan Manuel de Rosas and his administration, and enquiring on a recurrent topic in the author's work: the burial deprivation and the post mortem outrage of executed political adversaries as normal practices of the federal government. Rivera Indarte, a furious militant against Rosas, builds two opposite conceptions of these unburied remains. If, as the author suggests, the spoils of the enemy are objects in whose vexation the federal government beastly delights, for the opponents of Rosas, these remains are the sublime mark of the fallen martyrs, representing the validity of fight against terror in defense of the liberal political principles. The unburied body (or its parts) as a disputed signifier, his symbolic duality, is a decisive element of the political-rhetoric construction of Rivera, aimed to emphasize the sharp line between Rosas enemies and Rosas followers as irreconcilable spheres, which are associated, respectively, with civilization and barbarity.