Marco Denevi, Los expedientes

There is no doubt that bureaucracy is a matter of general concern, and one that is well established in literature. As we have seen, in the River Plate bureaucracy is first identified as a major problem and a future determining force in society in the early 1940s by Martínez Estrada. However, it was in the 1950s that the subject really emerged: with his publication of ‘Sábado de Gloria’, with Benedetti's stories and poems, and with Denevi's play, Los expedientes. Like Benedetti and Martínez Estrada, Denevi was very much an insider, and he used his experience as a functionary in two very different works that explore the public bureaucracy of the post-Perón era.

Denevi's play, Los expedientes, opened on 20 September 1957, in the Teatro Nacional Cervantes, Buenos Aires. Press notices were favourable, identifying Denevi's choice of the bureaucratic theme as particularly apposite. The correspondent of La Nación, for example, saw the ‘irremisible sumisión de la criaturas humanas al creciente tamborileo posesivo de los expedientes’ as Denevi's ‘mayor acierto satírico’; meanwhile, in Clarín bureaucracy was characterised thus: ‘Tema universal, pero muy nuestro’ (Denevi, 1957, unnumbered). A later commentator, Agustín del Saz, echoes the view of Clarín, praising a play that he sees as breaking new ground: ‘La expresión de la burocracia y la sátira contra ella ha sido siempre un tema muy repetido en la literatura. Pero una visión plástica del burócrata y de sus medios profesionales que son los expedientes no se nos había dado en escena’ (1967: 141).

The author's preface to Los expedientes indicates his basic perspective, which is that bureaucracy itself, incarnated in files, is an evil, dehumanising force:

En esta obra se intenta […] convertir en situaciones teatrales algunos de los problemas propios de la burocracia: su falsedad, su vaciedad, su automaticidad, y el trastrueque ético que a veces opera en el espíritu de quienes la sirven. Los conflictos puramente humanos le resultan pues, ajenos como asunto dramático. Y por ello los verdaderos protagonistas de la obra son, como lo sugiere el título, los expedientes, esa malévola invención que resume los males de la burocracia (1957: 6).

The office in Los expedientes is the claims department of an unnamed ministry; indeed, there is little to indicate that the office is located in Argentina; the time frame, too, is unspecified, the references to office equipment and fittings being simply typically twentieth century.