The The narrative structure of 38 estrelas: intrigue and memory in Josefina Licitra´s report

Abstract

In this article, I analyse the narrative structure of the report 38 estrelas, written by the Argentine journalist Josefina Licitra, which chronicles the escape of female political prisoners in Uruguay in 1971. The work addresses the period of repressive governments in Latin America from the perspective of female Tupamara guerrilla fighters. I seek to understand the work’s structure and the narrative resources used in it, which include self-reflexivity, intermedial references to cinema, and the interweaving of testimonies within a thriller story. The analysis demonstrates how aspects related to women in urban guerrilla lead to a discussion about social representations of gender and the establishment of memory itself. It also reveals that the use of two predominant types of narrators in different parts of the work allows for a reading of the text as a thriller, without prescinding interpretative journalism.