Matambre trilogy: meat, rethorics and power in Esteban Echeverria

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to bring Esteban Echeverría’s El matadero, and two other brief texts by the same author face to face. These texts are as peculiar as the author’s well-known work found after his death: Apología del matambre and Historia de un matambre de toro. Thus, a trilogy is shaped, from which it is possible to conjecture about a writing developed upon the possibility of using the matambre – a typical cow meat joint from Rio da Prata – as part of a way of the rethoric rehearsed on several occasions during the fight for discursive power over Juan Manuel de Rosa’s dictatorship period.