The Censors, by Luisa Valenzuela

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“The Censors” by Luisa Valenzuela

The short story “The Censors” by Luisa Valenzuela is set in Argentina during the dictatorship of Jorge Videla who reigned from 1976 to 1983. Juan, the protagonist of the text, starts the story by writing a letter to his old friend, Mariana, at her new residence in Paris. He had received Mariana’s new address from a confidential source and was too excited to think of his actions before writing and sending the letter. Later, Juan’s “mind [was] off his job during the day and [he couldn’t] sleep at night,” thinking of the letter (Valenzuela 966). He believes the contents to be innocent and irreproachable, but the censors of the Argentine government “examine, sniff, feel, and read between the lines of each and every letter” (Valenzuela 966) for the signs of uprising among the people. He then thinks of the censorship offices and the extremely few letters that are actually sent. He ponders the months or years that a single letter could take to be delivered and all that time “the freedom, maybe even life, of both the sender and receiver [are] in jeopardy” (Valenzuela 966). Juan is troubled for Mariana’s well being. He knows that the “Censor’s Secret Command operates all over the world [and] there’s nothing to stop them from going [to the] obscure Paris neighborhood [and] kidnapping Mariana” (Valenzuela 966). Soon he decides his course of action is to join the Post Office’s Censorship Division and retrieve his letter to save Mariana. Juan was hired immediately as there was a great demand for censors and no one “bothered to check on his references” (Valenzuela 966). He was content to be working; all he could do to retrieve his letter was being done. Even when he was sent to Section K where envelopes were ...

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...ack to destroy Juan. Since he didn’t find the letter to be important, he acted carelessly and discarded it and was “one more victim of his devotion to his work” (Valenzuela 968). Although many people would not go as far as to essentially commit suicide through the government, Valenzuela is making the point that secrets are dangerous. At the same time, Valenzuela is showing the average person can always be corrupted and caught up in their government if said government is corrupt. The most innocent person will always be tainted and destroyed by an iniquitous government. Through Juan’s letter and actions, Valenzuela depicts the satirical theme of how anyone can be corrupted by a perverted government.

Works Cited

Valenzuela, Luisa. “The Censors.” Elements of Literature: World Literature. Trans.

David Unger. Austin, Texas: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2006. Print.

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