Poetics of War in Crónicas heroicas de una guerra estúpida

Abstract

This article argues that Crónicas heroicas de una guerra estúpida (1975) is more than a collection of chronicles: it is a literary laboratory where Augusto Céspedes establishes his poetics of the Chaco War. The work develops around three axes: the tension between testimonial silence and the need to narrate, the failure to consolidate a dehumanizing discourse on the enemy, and the survivor’s identity crisis. These elements transcend journalism and anticipate the short stories of Sangre de mestizos (1936), positioning Céspedes’s writing as a critical and traumatic memory of the Chaco conflict.