The Private Power of Women in Adversity.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara
• Position: Book Review

Carmen's Rust [Oxido de Carmen], by Ana Maria Del Rio. Trans., Michael J. Lazzara. Woodstock: Overlook Duckworth, 2003.

While Chilean dissidents such as Isabel Allende and Antonio Skarmeta moved abroad during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-90), others stayed at home to record the effects of the authoritarian regime. Ann Maria del Rio, one of the most gifted writers of her generation, is one of the latter. Published in Santiago in 1986, Carmen's Rust offers a powerful allegory of repression and resistance that, thanks to this excellent translation by Michael J. Lazzara, is now reaching an international audience.

Del Rio sets her story in a labyrinthine mansion during the despotic regime of General Carlos Ibanez (1952-58). The narrator is the son of a decadent society maven who abandoned him to the care of his grandmother and his perpetually hysterical Aunt Malva, two domestic despots. He is accompanied by his half-sister, Carmen, whose mother was reputedly a dancer and a spy, occupations unacceptable to the straight-laced matrons. A woman of "bad instincts," Carmen's mother lives imprisoned in a glass room in the back patio, where Grandmother and Aunt Malva can keep an eye on her. The household also includes a number of other exotic characters: Carlitos, Aunt Malva's son (referred to hilariously as the President of the Republic in deference to his mother's aspirations for him); Uncle Ascanio, a virtually lobotomized collector of eggs and eggshells; and Meche, the maid, whose dictatorial instincts parallel her employer's.

The mansion constitutes a kind of microcosm of the dictatorship, complete with a despot (Grandmother), her lieutenant (Aunt Malva), a police force (Meche), a subdued intellectual (Ascanio), a prisoner (Carmen's mother), a future president hand-picked by the Wrants (Carlitos), and dissidents (Carmen and her brother). The narrator's absent mother represents the self-indulgent bourgeoisie and his father, sent off to the Chena garrison because his emotional instability made him unfit for service in the capital, is the flawed but nevertheless powerful military, which exerts its influence from afar. An assortment of visiting politicians and clerics maintain the structure. Thus, the dysfunctional family is a metaphor of the dysfunctional state.

Grandmother and Aunt Malva do their best to "civilize" and "gentrify" Carmen, compelling her to take music lessons, but the girl soon learns to use her budding sexuality as a means to...