Las cautivas, by Mariano Tenconi Blanco:

“How do you say ‘I love you’ in the Indian language?”

Abstract

In Las cautivas, Mariano Tenconi Blanco carries out a reinterpretation of the theme of captivity, characteristic of the origins of Argentine literature, to construct an epic and erotic story between an Indian woman and a French woman who cross a territory fraught with dangers in
the 19th century. The author retains elements of this topic that have inspired Esteban Echeverría, Jorge Luis Borges, and César Aira, among other writers. Still, in this reinterpretation, he builds a story of passion in which he
constantly highlights otherness, while, in Tzvetan Todorov's terms, the Conquest of the other is carried out, and in this case, of the other woman. Tenconi Blanco plays with the polysemy of capture: captured by men in a violent environment that seeks to subdue them, and also captured by each other in a torrid story of passion. This dramatic piece, which has been performed in official theaters in Buenos Aires and in Madrid, can be studied through the intersection of several lines of thought and criticism: race,
decoloniality, gender, and sexuality. The two characters explore territory, their own bodies, and the bodies of others, freeing themselves from the conventions of the systems in which they have been raised, or where they
have been, unknowingly, hostages. Among them, there are differences (of language, of race, in their worldview), but there is no subalternity. In María Lugones's words, this journey could be understood as a pilgrimage (2003). As they become a couple, questioning the concepts of civilization and barbarism and the role that 19th-century women play in the construction of a nation, Tenconi Blanco also creates a Bildungsroman. While they are becoming a couple and questioning the concepts of civilization and
barbarism, as well as the role that women in the 19th century play during the construction of a nation, Tenconi Blanco also creates a text of learning or of identity construction.