Desexiled. The return of Julián Zubieta Torres

Abstract

The desexiled concept was shaped by the Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti after he was exiled from Uruguay in 1973, when Juan María Bordaberry assumed dictatorial power. The period from that year until the end of the Uruguayan dictatorship in 1985, a fact that led to his return, suggested to the poet to mean it with that term. Paraphrasing this concept, we will personify the exile and return of the remains of Julián Zubieta Torres to his town, Arguedas, after his assassination in November 1936, and the consequences that this fact had for his family. There is no doubt that to understand what happened in Arguedas both during the Second Republic and after the uprising on July 18, 1936, it is necessary to approach, even in passing, the socio-political and economic situation of the nineteenth century, since Navarre was an essential protagonist in that board.

During that century, the agrarian question, without a doubt, was the workhorse of the rural world, since the continued privatization of the commons mainly harmed the most disadvantaged class. This is the axis of the article. The social gap widened with the entry of the twentieth century, so that labor demands on this issue were not long in coming. Different unions mobilized demanding the return of the communes to the exploitation of the neighbors of the different towns, including Arguedas. The problem was that the people who publicly signified themselves in that line and those who participated in the strikes confronting the dominant powers of the moment, suffered serious consequences after the coup d'état that took place in July 1936, since their names appeared on the lists provided by the rebels. Not only that, their relatives suffered the consequences of these accusations being equally reprisals to the point of having to leave their homes on many occasions. This work, the first of its kind on Arguedas, has been possible thanks to the abundant bibliography on the agrarian question and the emptying of the Municipal Archive of Arguedas.