One hundred years away from Agusto D'Halmar's Juana Lucero: More bastard than ever

Abstract

This work reflects upon the possible present-day relevance of a Chilean novel written one hundred years ago, in 1902. We postulate its validity on the grounds that it provides a formulation of Chilean identity (in terms of the individual, the family, the city and the country) within a framework of exclusions, depicting its vices. In fact, an elegant brothel in Santiago (where Juana, an icon of the emerging middle class with no social visibility, is placed) is seen as a synecdoche of a Chilean home identifiable with violence and lethal sexuality. In this tale, Chilean faces appear deformed by class distinctions, snobbery and a voracious sexual appetite, thus scarring the nation with the signs of treachery towards the emerging middle class.