DE CÓMO LA MISMIDAD Y LA OTREDAD REVIVEN LA UTOPÍA. UNA LECTURA DE EL ECO DE LOS PASOS DE

Literary critics when reading the novel El eco de los pasos (1979) by Costa Rican author Julieta Pinto have focused on the betrayal of the ideals that supposedly inspired the Costa Rican Civil War of 1948. Instead, this article analyzes its architecture as an ideological novel, written in the midst of the Nicaraguan Sandinista revolution. The novel establishes the thesis that the Otherness (the Nicaraguan society) aspires to the values of the Self (those of Costa Rican society). This allows a re-conceptualization of the term “revolution” exempt of leftist connotations. This article demonstrates the mechanisms put in place to channel this Costa Rica oriented message. Among those, the construction of two plot lines: one dedicated to a plausible interaction between Carlos Fonseca Amador (based on the Sandinista leader) and Ernesto, a veteran of the Civil War; the other, to the 48 conflict narrated by the repressed memory voice of Ernesto, as well as a tailored manipulation of historical events. In short, the deep- rooted solidarity with the Sandinista cause puts El eco de los pasos in a particular place in Costa Rican literature, generally considered indifferent to the contemporaneity of the Central American revolutionary movements.