Argentine Afterlives: Race, Hemispheric Comparison, and Translation in Benjamín de Garay’s Los sertones
Abstract
This article considers Argentine Benjamín de Garay’s 1938 Spanish translation of Brazilian Euclides da Cunha’s 1902 Os Sertões as a transnational meditation on racialized processes of nation formation in South America. The translation paradoxically frames the linguistic and historical relationships between Brazil and Argentina in terms of both similarity and difference. While de Garay stresses the parallels between Brazil and Argentina in his translator’s prologue, he also includes a glossary of supposedly untranslatable Portuguese terms, suggesting incommensurability between the two national experiences. Tellingly, many of the glossary’s terms refer to racial categories. In this way, the de Garay text acts as a reflection on the divergent paths that Argentina and Brazil take in treating racial heterogeneity in their respective national narratives