SOURCE: Hassett, John J. “Dictatorship, Memory and the Prospects for Democracy: The Fiction of Ariel Dorfman.” Third World Quarterly 13, no. 2 (1992): 393-98.

In the following essay, Hassett explores how Dorfman utilizes memory as a source of dramatic and emotional conflict in Viudas, La última canción de Manuel Sendero and “La batalla de los colores.”

In my comments on “La batalla de los colores”, Viudas and La última canción de Manuel Sendero I intend to show how the narrative world of Ariel Dorfman revolves principally around two agnostic forces: the desire on the part of a repressive military regime to erase all memory of the past and the struggle of a people intent on keeping that past alive and bringing about democratic change. Dorfman's texts suggest that at the heart of our humanity is the struggle to remember and that our refusal to forget reflects a political act...