THE EXCAVATION
by Augusto Roa Bastos, 1953

As in most of the fiction of the Paraguayan writer Augusto Roa Bastos, "The Excavation" ("La excavación"), explores the human condition in the most deplorable of circumstances. Found in his best-known short story collection, El trueno entre las hojas (Thunder among the Trees; 1953), the story paints a world found in many of Roa Bastos's novels and short stories. On one hand it depicts the devastation of war and its aftermath. On the other it is a philosophical treatise on guilt, as the main character confronts his past transgressions and his demons and loses hope of redemption and escape.

The story centers around a tunnel that prisoners from the Chaco War—a bloody, bitter, and protracted conflict between Bolivia and Paraguay over an arid area shared by the two nations—are digging to escape their captivity. The terrible conditions in which the prisoners have suffered, including starvation, filth, torture, and disease, have lasted for months. Having given up hope of obtaining freedom by legal means, the prisoners begin to dig the tunnel and make slow progress. In this very short work Roa Bastos is able to portray vividly the conditions that have decimated the original group, the despair of the prisoners, and the darkness of the tunnel. He sets the scene and then focuses on one of the prisoners and what goes through his mind as he digs and is buried alive, while the others are lured to escape so that they can be executed.

It would be easy to alienate a reader with such horror. Roa Bastos, however, is able to communicate the theme in a manner that goes beyond the immediate circumstances surrounding his main character. By the use of ironic twists, the writer succeeds in making the story a metaphor for the human condition that blurs the line between the roles of victim and victimizer. He achieves this both by the structure of the story and by the rich language.

The story revolves around two sets of parallels. The first is the framework that looks at the tunnel dig and the prisoners' collective desire to escape, juxtaposed with the individual effort of one man. The other involves the thoughts of the prisoner who thinks he is escaping, while the reader realizes that the opposite is happening. In this manner the story confronts a multilayered reality that goes beyond the motives for social protest to a complex message related to guilt.

Critics agree that one of the strengths of Roa Bastos's literary production is his ability to treat themes particular to his besieged nation—his novels, for example, are an integral part of the Latin American literary canon—while communicating broader, more significant realities for all readers. In the case of "The Excavation," the terse yet rich language, the well-executed descriptions, and the complex structure make the story a prototype of this claim. Furthermore, through the use of irony the author is able to create an ambiguity that lets readers decide for themselves what role people play in the human tragedy of oppression and injustice.

In "The Excavation" this irony is based on the perception of those who are captive as opposed to what the narrator tells the reader. The prisoners believe that the tunnel exit is near, yet the narrator indicates otherwise. The individual captive becomes demented with hope, imagining that he is reaching the end of the tunnel. The reader knows, however, that the very things that are dooming the escape are the signs that the prisoner uses to summon hope: "He was so absorbed in his excitement, and so wrapped up in the maddening darkness of the tunnel, that he could not see that it was not proximity to the river, that it was not his digging that was producing that warm mud, but the blood spurting out of his nails and from his abraded fingertips."

Roa Bastos himself acknowledged the influence of the Argentinean short fiction master Jorge Luis Borges on the philosophical subject of the story. Caught in a physically confining space, the character confronts his role in the killing of other human beings. In his claustrophobia he slides into the tunnel of memory, to the time during the war when Paraguayans dug a similar tunnel to reach their Bolivian opponents in their trenches. Roa Bastos freezes the moment as the silence "that preceded the massacre and the one that followed … formed two identical, sepulchral, throbbing silences." In a reversal of guilt, the victim visualizes his own bloodthirsty actions in the Chaco War, which included emptying his automatic weapon into a sleeping boy. In this way the Chaco tunnel and the one he had started in prison are "one [and the same] hole, straight and dark." In this parallel he becomes the enemy who has imprisoned the 89 men, including himself, who are now his fellow captives. In a Borges-like ironic circle, he becomes the "twin brother" of the man he had executed in the other tunnel and is executed himself. After he causes a landslide in the tunnel, the reader surmises that he dies inside. The liberating face-off with his conscience results in a physical liberation through death.

The story concludes with another tragic irony. The prisoners are lured into escaping when they find the prison deserted and the doors unlocked. As they leave the prison, they are ambushed and shot. The official story of their intention to flee is then substantiated by the presence of the tunnel, but the narrator adds, "The evidence left out one detail: the non-existent exit that no one bothered to find." The tunnel not only did not help them escape, but it also served as justification for their execution.

"The Excavation" combines a powerful statement on the ravages of war with a profound view of a dehumanizing guilt that dooms man to face forever the consequences of his cruelty. With a rich and powerful style and a complex narrative structure, Roa Bastos creates a vivid, unforgettable experience for the reader.

—Stella T. Clark