Víctor Montoya

Víctor Montoya
Born	(1958-06-21)21 June 1958 La Paz, Bolivia
Occupation	Writer, journalist, pedagogue
Language	Spanish
Nationality	Bolivia
Genre	Novel, short story, essay

Víctor Montoya (born 1958) is a Bolivian writer, cultural journalist, and pedagogue. Imprisoned by the dictatorship in his native Bolivia, he became an exile following a campaign by Amnesty International in 1977. He currently resides in Europe where he continues to write professionally for publications in Latin America, Europe, and the United States.

Biography

Born in La Paz on June 21, 1958. He attended primary school in Jaime Mendoza and secondary school May Day where he learned to read and write. From early childhood he lived in the mining towns of Siglo XX and Llallagua, in northern Potosí department. There, as a child, the miserable conditions of the miners led him to identify with and join their efforts to change those conditions. On June 25, 1967 he witnessed the Slaughter of San Juan; army units opened fire on miners, women, and children, killing 27 people in the mining town of northern Potosí.

Prisoner

Even after witnessing the Slaughter of San Juan, Montoya stayed focused in school and was a student leader until mid-1976. In 1976, as a result of his political activities, he was persecuted, tortured, and jailed by the military dictatorship of Hugo Banzer Suárez.Montoya fled and illegally had to take refuge inside a mine and then in a house of Oruro, where he was caught and arrested with union leaders. He was then tortured and imprisoned in the San Pedro Prison and in the top-security jail of Chonchocoro-Viacha. It was there that he wrote his first published book, the eyewitness account, Strike and Repression.

After Prison

In 1977, Amnesty International, declared Montoya a prisoner of conscience and created a campaign for his release. After his release he arrived in Sweden as an exile. He took up residence in Stockholm and graduated from the Stockholm Institute of Education. He began to work in a municipal library promoting cultural projects and taught and directed workshops on the Quechua language. He later studied pedagogy at the Institute for Language and worked as a teacher for many years.

Literary Career

Montoya founded the literary magazines PuertAbierta and Contraluz. His work won him awards and literary scholarships. His stories have been translated and published in international anthologies. Currently, he writes for publications in Latin America, Europe, and the United States. He is caretaker of the digital anthology of Latin American Storytellers in Sweden [1].

Montoya is considered among the best storytellers of modern Bolivian Literature. This creative storytelling comes from his life stories in the mine and political activism. Direct contact with the mining world has influenced his narratives; Montoya says, “The experiences of my childhood, along with subtle thread of imagination and social commitment have been instrumental in conceiving the ideas to write my books”.

Literary Style

In 1976, Montoya documented his torture through narratives, which later became a series of short stories. These stories are said to be Montoya’s real experiences of torture from the Bolivian government; who used torture techniques in order to stay in power of the Bolivian citizens.

Montoya’s literary career focuses on telling the truth about his experiences with the government and it’s tactics and forming the words in a story line, which the reader can follow and become engulfed within the story. His style is characterized as a descriptive language that is both visual and direct and who’s fictionalized characters is based on real people where the constant presence of physical violence is the common and repetitive theme. Montoya has a history of using this story telling technique when writing; readers praise him for his literary work.

First Stories

Victor Montoya’s first series of short stories which were published in 1982 include:

• “Death’s Chessboard”
• “Enter The Bloody Letter”
• “The Hooded One”
• “The Death of Carmelo”
• “The Program”
• “Miner’s Massacre”
• “Confessions of a Fugitive”
• “Facing the Firing Squad”
• “They May Murder Me, But I Will Not Die”
• “Days and Nights of Anguish”

Death’s Chessboard - This short story begins in a “story-telling” manner relating the oppressed to the oppressor through a relationship where the game of “checkmate” is present. Montoya incorporates a historical background that reflects on his experiences of violence, death, betrayal, abuse, and the violation of Human Rights.

Enter The Bloody Letter – A real story in which Montoya uses his literary style to use the mother image metaphorically in a symbolic triad of the dictatorship; the biological mother, whom one loves and obeys, the second mother, the teacher who disciplines with violence, control, and power, and a third mother, who has total power of action over every individual. This story is a symbolic critique of the repressive dictatorial system of the time.

The Hooded One – this story depicts the torturer-tortured relationship, where the ‘hood’s’ function is to assure a dark world of anonymity for the torturers, characteristic of the collective ‘silence and darkness’ of all dictatorships that existed in the southernmost region of South America during that same period.

The Death of Carmelo - Montoya combines the symbolic and dramatic capture of Inti Peredo, right after the failed guerrilla movement of Che Guevara.

The Program – this story serves as an introduction to the flight of the miners in the “Miners’ Massacre” story. It exposes, in a critical manner, the lack of centralized goal and lack of an effective plan of action, which is well coordinated, and ultimately leads to the desired results.

Miners’ Massacre – Montoya exposes the massacre of the night of San Juan, a historical event that took place in the early morning of June 24, 1967. The government sent its armed men and wiped out, in a brutal and massive manner, the mineworkers -killing innocent people. Montoya goes back to his remembrances to the time when he was nine years old, to search for the early foundations of his experiences in the mining district during the 20th century. Montoya happened to be a witness of the genocide in which he illustrates through this short story.

Confessions of a Fugitive - Montoya demonstrates his creative and literary capacity, as he presents the story based on situations that came to his knowledge through other victims of torture. He incorporated them in order to narrate the story in the first person giving them cohesion and establishing a unifying theme. Based on this information Montoya connects three parts, asking the reader permission in the second one, to describe the methods of torture. It is a tale of the desire for the death of the dictator, as well as that idealized and hoped-for escape; both wishes taken to fiction. This narrative is also representation of the similar events taking place in the neighboring country of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil. It does, nevertheless, have a happy ending.

Facing the Firing Squad– This story criticizes the State of Siege, a decree that was utilized as an excuse to assassinate people in cold blood.

They May Murder Me, But I Will Not Die –This short story is centered on the tortured, taking the graphic descriptions way beyond the reader’s imagination. The story tells of rituals of martyrdom are repeated in scenes where the female image reaches very low levels of humiliation and disregard, as she is raped by a man and by a dog. This narrative represents the attachment to the ideal and desire to avoid losing one's personal identity, even though the body may die.

Days and Nights of Anguish – This short story is the most extensive of this selection. It was awarded the national short story prize, given by the Technical University of Oruro, Bolivia, in 1984. This story describes the dramatic story of the Bolivian miner in all its aspects and his relationship with death as an inevitable companion. Once again Montoya presents the reader with an atmosphere of massive killings, blood, machine guns, and terror as an unavoidable fate.

As Montoya concludes his first series of short stories he challenges the reader to think about the necessity of committing to a social cause that fights an oppressive system. The reader, not only is informed, but also becomes a witness much better equipped to join the challenge to the official story, for Montoya believes, “knowledge is also a form of power and strength”.

Bibliography

• Huelga y represión [Strike and Repression] (1979)
• Días y noches de angustia [Days and Nights of Anguish] (1982)
• Cuentos Violentos [Violent Stories] (1991)
• El laberinto del pecado [The Labyrinth of Sin] (1993)
• El eco de la conciencia [The Echo of Conscience] (1994)
• Antología del cuento latinoamericano en Suecia [Anthology of the Latin American Short Story in Sweden] (1995)
• Palabra encendida [Word on Fire] (1996)
• El niño en el cuento boliviano [The Child in the Bolivian Short Story] (1999)
• Cuentos de la mina [Stories from the Mine] (2000)
• Entre tumbas y pesadillas [Between Tombs and Nightmares] (2002)
• Fugas y socavones [Escapes and Underground Tunnels] (2002)
• Literatura infantil: Lenguaje y fantasía [Children’s Literature: Language and Fantasy] (2003)
• Poesía boliviana en Suecia [Bolivian Poetry in Sweden] (2005)
• Retratos [Portraits] (2006)
• Cuentos en el exilio [Stories in Exile] (2008)
• [Friendly Matus] (2013)

External links (site name, URL)

Literatura Hispanoamericana: [2]

Víctor Montoya: [3]

Proyecto Patrimonio: [4]

Rodelú: [5]

Crónicas mineras, de Víctor Montoya: [6]

Almiar: [7]

Ficticia: [8]

Portal ALBA: [9]