Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Professor Rodriguez
14 December 2018
It is no secret that the world has progressively encountered extreme circumstances that
eventually lead to the perception that the human race must be losing their humanity. Often we
become consumed with the idea that what happens around us is solely specific to our
geographical and cultural surroundings. In Mariana Enriquez novel The Things We Lost in the
Fire we are taken through a riveting journey into the depths of violence, injustice, and black
magic within Argentina and the epidemics that cause this chaos. As a reader we soon become
aware of the parallel between these epidemics in Argentina and how it reflects on the United
States as well. As the novel goes on the reader is able to grasp and acknowledge the familiarity
of situations unraveling within Enriquez’s short stories. The socio political atrocities came as a
result of dictatorship in Argentina while the commonality of domestic violence stemmed from
illuminate the blurred line between reality and the psyche as a result of PTSD. Within the short
stories there are gruesome truths of Argentina’s violence, abuse, and social injustice that reflect
the severity of ignored and under reported issues in the United States and the chain reaction it
creates. Mariana Enriquez engrossed her readers with the horror and fantasy her novel brings
together all while subconsciously becoming aware of the familiarity of the national atrocities as
The violation of human rights is often seen coming as a result of corruption and
wickedness in the hearts of those meant to protect us and our communities. There an unfortunate
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number of growing cases of police corruption and brutality specifically targeting certain low
socioeconomic areas and races. In the novel we come across the story Under the Black Water
that depicts a relatively true story of police corruption in Argentina. We see how a pair of young
boys were murdered in the slums at the hands of police officers lacking any moral code. The
police officers were opportunists who deemed themselves God in deciding these boys’ lives
could and should end as they’d have nothing to offer society, they were simply two brats from
the slums. An exceptionally raveging quote from the story goes, “Because that was what cops
did in the southern slums, much more than protect people: they killed teenagers, sometimes out
of cruelty, other times because the kids refused to work for them- to steal for them or sell the
drugs the police seized. Or for betraying them. The reason for killing poor kids were many and
despicable”. (Enriquez 157) This quote is exceptionally important to the central theme of the
novel and how the issue of police brutality is without borders and reflects similar situations that
As years go by the crime rates in the United States increase and the brutalness of the
crimes with it. Police brutality has recently been brought to the attention of the public and it has
been shown that officers often target young black men and women to unleash their rage on.
Additionally, firearms have become the greatest enabler to violence on the streets. In the issue of
gun violence it is stated that nearly 100,000 Americans are shot yearly and the majority die. An
article in Cosmopolitan magazine written by Elizabeth Van Brocklin focuses no only on those
perished but also on the people who survive them and the psychological consequences. It is often
difficult to find the proper words to describe the way gun violence may affect someone, but the
article was able to articulate it through this quote, “Together, these victims represent a little
acknowledged or studied diaspora of trauma. "An event like this shatters your belief that you're
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safe in the world," says Gerard Lawson, PhD, a licensed counselor and professor at Virginia
Tech, who helped coordinate the counseling response to that school's 2007 shooting.” (Van
Brocklin) I found that through the quote by Gerard Lawson we can begin to understand the never
ending paranoia and suffering after a violent attack. This remains relevant in a parallel between
the United States and Argentina in how both countries suffer obvious violent attacks amongst
their people, how law enforcement fail to do their due diligence in more ways than one, and how
the people residing in both countries suffer psychological traumas that will affect the rest of their
lives.
In addition to corrupt law enforcement and gun violence, Argentina has a history of being
at the mercy of a corrupt government as well. Similarly, it has become evident that the United
States facing the same charges, only in our case, our government were the puppeteers who
encouraged corruption in other countries for our own benefit. Mariana Enriquez effectively
captured living through corruption and dictatorship through the point of view of teenage girls,
who are prone to be susceptible to the most foul conditions. Her short story “The Intoxicated
Years” shows this as the narrator goes so far as to say, “They’d forced the president to hand over
his reigns before the end of his term, and no one liked the new one too much, even though he
won by an impressive margin. The stench of resignation was in the air, it seeped from the twisted
mouths of the embittered people…” (Enriquez 53). Political corruption is not new to history, it is
what many of the greatest empires have been built off of. As countries like the United States and
Argentina grew, their civil leaders began to be consumed by the wealth and power that came
Argentina spent many decades under back to back dictators who exploited their land,
causing poverty and inflation that affected every lower to middle class citizen in a devastating
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way. As they profited off industrialization, their farmers and land workers were robbed of the
ability to provide for themselves as their greatest river was turned into a dump site for toxic
chemicals and hazardous waste from the meat factories. “Under the Black Water” narrows in on
the conditions of the river explaining that, “at that point the Riachuelo has almost no current; it is
calm and dead, with its oil and plastic scraps and heavy chemicals, the city’s great garbage can”
to really zone in on how the city had allowed for industrialization to inflict this much damage to
a river on the border of the slums, easily accessible by children and pumped through their water
pipes (Enriquez 158). Additionally, in a magazine interview with Adam Vitcavage from Electric
Lit Enriquez gives us her nonfiction part of the story and were she took that inspiration from to
create this short story. She goes on to say that, “These industries run unregulated by the State.
The river is sort of a symbol of carelessness and corruption. The river marks the geographical
limit between the city of Buenos Aires and what we call Gran Buenos Aires, or the suburbs. On
the river banks, there are also many slums”. (Enriquez, Vitcavage) The idea that this was all in
the best interest of the country is easily uncovered as false, seeing as the only people benefiting
from this are the rich who continue to become wealthier. The United States connects with this in
how they’ve exploited the lands of many natural areas to create factories and pollute the
atmosphere, in addition to this they’ve recently dug up pipe lines in Flint, Michigan against the
advisement that doing this would negatively affect the people in the area. It has been over a year
of the people of Flint not having clean water yet somehow we are deemed one of the richest and
advanced countries in the world. Both of these countries specifically target poor areas to enact
their sociopolitical atrocities that are only a one sided winning game. It is common for this to
happen as they create a ploy of making their actions sound good hearted and maybe even
offering some incentive to the people of the area, all while knowing (or at least assuming) the
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outcome will be different than perceived. Once they’ve began their projects and the residents
acknowledge how negatively this is affecting their living standards, they are in no position to
fight back. With little money and little traffic in these areas, known as the ghetto or the slums,
there is little reason for the larger city people to believe anything should be going wrong. It also
makes it evident how little resources they began with and how that number has decreased.
succumbing to their environment despite geographic locations shows a parallel of the way their
vulnerability is taken advantage of. For this reason, countries around the world formed what is
known as the United Nations, an organization that makes sure countries in accordance with them
are upholding their shared values and respect for their residents ensuring they live comfortable
lives. In a newspaper article by Ramesh Ponnuru titled “The U.S can ignore the UN’s Ranting
about Poverty” because they have been doing it for years and clearly see nothing off balanced
with the way many in their country are living. Bringing up the issue of poverty, the UN created
research based reports on how and what the United States was doing for their people to improve
their lives. Unfortunately, it was found that “The report's treatment of health care is even worse.
Last year the Congressional Budget Office found that one of the Republican bills to change
Obamacare would reduce the number of people with health insurance by 22 million. Much of
that projected decline resulted from the bill's fines for people who go without insurance”
(Ponnuru). That being said, it is easier to target lower income people who cannot fight for
themselves and to brainwash those watching this happen. The article continues to explain how
fees will decrease but healthcare status will be revoked in an attempt to put money back into our
healthcare system. In another twisted attempt to make the rich, richer America’s lower class will
suffer rapid deterioration of medical resources available to aid them and their children. As a
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result of this health insurance cut, another problem begins to arise: Child Homelessness. Being
homeless as an adult is hard enough as it is, but to live through those horrors as a child is bound
to create deeply rooted issues that will play into the development of the child’s personality and
ability to socialize. Through the National Center on Family Homelessness, a scholarly journal
was written that indicates the severity of being a homeless child on the streets stating that
“Without a place to call home, children are severely challenged by unpredictability, dislocation,
and chaos. Homelessness and exposure to traumatic stresses place them at high risk for poor
mental health outcomes. Despite the pressing needs of these children, federal policy during the
last decade has focused primarily on chronically homeless adult individuals—to the exclusion of
the families”. (Bassuk) The structural causes of family homelessness all goes back to the
unsustainable lives instilled on us by governments in both Argentina and the United States alike.
Just like Mariana Enriquez described the southern slums of Argentina, our children will suffer
lifelong disabilities and deformities that will forevermore give them a barely humane way of life
Amongst the many issues people face in both Argentina and the United States is mental
health. This is probably one of the most silently suffered issues within these two countries for a
few reasons. Many are failed to be diagnosed, live in an environment where mental health isn’t
deemed “real” or they are too ashamed or embarrassed to admit they are suffering from wounds
unseen. Mariana Enriquez encapsulates the effects of people suffering in multiple of her short
stories including “The Intoxicated Years”. This short story is not only of political horror, but of
the mental digression that comes afterwards. We see these three young girls dependant on drugs
and unaware of the circumstances and consequences of their actions. It is hard to believe that
they acknowledge the dangers of the things they do and drugs they take because they have
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become immune to the lows that come with the high the same way they have become immune to
indulging in the thought that their government might get better. As a result, they used drugs as a
means of escape. Confirming what’s been known to happen to the majority of drug users, the
girls began to delve into harder drugs believing they were prepared for them. At one point the
narrator of the story said, “We knew the names of some medicines for psychosis, because we
wrote them down whenever someone mentioned them. When we took the blue pills that we
avoided forever after, poor ximena went so nuts she tried to set fire to the her wooden floor and
she went on and on about all the eyes she saw floating around the house”. (Enriquez 58) Through
this we see how casually the narrator talks about their planned drug use and how she’s indifferent
to the effect it has on another girl. Often drug use is a result of or can result in a form of mental
illness. It is often described as a dissociative property as they try and use their addiction to
escape the harsh realities of their world. In an excerpt from an article on mental health titled
“Mental Health: Awareness is Great, but Action is Essential; Raising Awareness of Mental
Health Problems Should be the Start of the Process of Tackling Them, Not The End” the author
makes a statement regarding the importance of acknowledging one's mental health issues and
helping the person suffering from this understand as well by saying that “This is especially
important for mental health, as opposed to more physical ailments...Many need help and
assistance to even accept they have an issue that requires dealing with. And the more there are
people around them who are "aware" of mental health problems and how they manifest, the more
likely this assistance is.” (Burnett) Essentially this explains that with educated people around to
understand what it means to be aware of mental illness in its various forms, it is highly likely that
someone suffering would become aware and receive medical assistance faster than someone who
was unaware and unaccepting. This is commonly not the case for people in the lower and
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working class of Argentina and the United States as they are set on different priorities. Culturally
this also creates a disconnect between Latin culture and having something wrong with you that
isn’t physical as well as American culture and having a better life than most, therefore should not
be resulting in mental illness. Many times people go their whole lives undiagnosed as the social
stigmas of the possibility of having a mental illness can make one feel as if they are “crazy” or
around the world and as the United States and Argentina have had many other issues in common,
this one is no stranger to them. Published in the New York Amsterdam News, “Domestic
Violence is Everybody’s Business” is an article that touches base on the amount of people who
ignore seeing domestic violence for fear that they are overreacting or imagining things because
they are familiar with the assailant. A strong point made in this article goes “According to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 12 million men and women are survivors
of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States over the course
of a year. This number amounts to 24 people every minute.” (Parker, Sharpe) The authors go on
to explain how if this number were written for a different situation like a plane crash the
The truth is they’re correct, many will avoid dealing with this topic in both countries
because it can’t possibly be that the majority of our men are this violent. In the same breath the
Argentine and American government willfully ignore the growing cries of victims of human
trafficking as their assailants hide behind the shadows and avoid the hard hand of the law. In a
scholarly journal delving into the legislative journey of reformation of human trafficking laws,
we learn that “Although human trafficking primarily takes place outside of the developed world,
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the International Labour Organization estimates there are some 1.5 million trafficking victims in
developed countries. In particular, as many as 17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked into the
United States annually.” (Elrod) This number shows how far from just our laws have been to the
victims of human trafficking and in accordance with this statement a magazine spoke to Maria
Enriquez about the way she portrayed men and said, “I remember having a conversation with a
friend and saying, 'But you never complain when men are portrayed as corrupt politicians,
violent cops, serial killers. Why is that a representation you’re comfortable with?”. (Bett,
Enriquez) This open ended questions allows for the much needed discussion between men of
both countries and how their representation may not be an accurate reflection of the individual,
but so long as they stay quiet on matters concerning domestic violence, they continue to live
The novel Things We Lost in the Fire accurately reflected issues in Argentina that
are easily reflected in the United States. Creating an enthralling novel mixed with horror and
truth telling allowed for readers to develop their own conclusions to the short stories. With this
the reader is able to make vaguely familiar connections to the issues they read and hear about in
their daily news, the familiarity will undoubtedly sit unsettled with them and spark a
conversation about how and why these issues are so wide spread yet never slowing down. The
issues without borders seek to be solved and reduced by a willing government, but the ulterior
motives of those in power stingily hold justice back for whatever just reasons they’ve conjured.
Works Cited
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of-mariana-enriquez-dcfc571f239b.
Bett, Alan. “Mariana Enriquez: Black Magical Realism.” CAPTCHA, Spambots and The Turing Test -
Van Brocklin, Elizabeth. “More than 100,000 Americans Are Shot Each Year. Roughly One-Third Die.
The Survivors, along with Bystanders and Loved Ones of the Dead, Can Experience Anguish
That Is Debilitating and Long-Lasting. As the National Debate around Firearms Rages on,
COSMOPOLITAN, Women's Health, and THE TRACE, a Nonprofit Newsroom Covering Gun
Violence, Joined Together to Investigate Wounds We Can't See: the Psychological Trauma That
Takes Hold in the Aftermath.” Cosmopolitan. June 2018, Vol. 264 Issue 6, p146-151. 6p. 5
libproxy.elac.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f6h&AN=1
29350083&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Parker, Kevin, and Nicole Sharpe. “Domestic Violence Is Everybody's Business.” New York Amsterdam
libproxy.elac.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f6h&AN=1
26623816&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Ponnuru, Ramesh. “U.S. Can Ignore The UN's Ranting About Poverty.” News India Times. , 15 June
2018,
libproxy.elac.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f6h&AN=1
30250419&site=eds-live&scope=site.
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Burnett, Dean. “Mental Health: Awareness Is Great, but Action Is Essential; Raising Awareness of
Mental Health Problems Should Be the Start of the Process of Tackling Them, Not the End.” The
go.galegroup.com.libproxy.elac.edu/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=mont93762&id=GALE|A538832984
&v=2.1&it=r&sid=ebsco.
Bassuk, Ellen. “Ending Child Homelessness in America.” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry., Oct.
2010,
libproxy.elac.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=5
4451260&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Elrod, John. “Filling the Gap: Refining Sex Trafficking Legislation to Address the Problem of
libproxy.elac.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=1
02443655&site=eds-live&scope=site.