Rodrigo Rey Rosa: The Pelcari Project

[lionel]

Published in 1991, The Pelcari Project is a novella by Guatemalan writer Rodrigo Rey Rosa which is translated by Paul Bowles. It concerns a state that takes its (probably mainly politically dissident) prisoners from death row and, via sophisticated brain surgery, turns them into happy work slaves in the forest.

Most of the story, though, emerges from one of the prisoners ? we?ll call him Yu(1) as 'Yu' is the only sound he can make because they?ve all had their tongues cut out ? who finds a notebook and pencil and discovers that, in spite of total long- and partial short-term memory loss, he can still write a diary containing highly intelligent thoughts. He slowly begins to make sense of his world through his pencil.

After the work day, the slaves are chained to a tree for the night, although Yu(1) manages to escape unseen up into the branches of his tree and is replaced by a new slave ? Yu(2), let?s say. The two strike up a clandestine friendship in so far as that?s possible; Yu(2) can also write, and he too is struggling to understand what has happened to him.

The Pelcari Project is concerned with the relationship between language and thought. The surgeon?s (now way out-of-date) computer tells us that the story is fairly contemporary, and although there?s no specific mention of place, it?s not too difficult to understand that writing is a metaphor for resistance against an oppressive government, and that Rey Rosa has Guatemala in mind.

[Liam]

Wow--this sounds like something in between A Clockwork Orange and Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog, but more specific to its country of origin, of course.

Now, "yu" is not the ONLY sound that a tongue-less man can make, but for the sake of the argument, let us assume that it is.

I think it's a chilling image of both the uniqueness and the universality of human suffering, as it almost comes out to "yo," which is "I" in Spanish, and "you" in English, implying that this, indeed, could happen to YU.

The tree is a particularly potent symbol as well, calling to mind the Biblical Tree of Knowledge--that great, monstrous trunk also known as civilization--and the Mayan Tree of Life, hovering somewhere on the periphery of human imagination, beckoning from afar with its promise of immortality (those of you not familiar with the myth but who've seen The Fountain will know what I'm talking about).


The Pelcari Project is concerned with the relationship between language and thought.

Lionel, could you perhaps say more about that? As an English major, I have had to take plenty of linguistics classes, but we mostly focused on applied/comparative linguistics as opposed to cognitive linguistics, which is what I think the book is also addressing. In other words, can human suffering be considered FULLY human if one lacks the language to describe it? In fact, this taking away of Yu(1)'s capacity for speech is something that J.M. Coetzee would undoubtedly LOVE--there is an absolutely chilling scene in Waiting for the Barbarians where they strap the narrator's hands to a tree-branch, hang him up, and listen to his piercing screams.


"He is calling his barbarian friends," someone observes. "That is barbarian language you hear." There is laughter...

Thank you [no pun intended] for posting this--this book would have undoubtedly slipped from my attention otherwise.