ABOUT EL ÚLTIMO GRUMETE DE LA BAQUEDANO AND SOMETHING ELSE

Abstract

This essay offers a reading of El último grumete de la Baquedano (1941), the nouvelle by Francisco Coloane, as an allegorical work. I read the trip of the corvette Baquedano as a trip of reaffirmation of sovereignty, performed by the Chilean fatherland of the mid-20th century on its territory and history. In Coloane’s nouvelle that theme is combined with a classic Bildungsroman in which what is being told is the story of a boy who becomes an adolescent, and fi nally a citizen-soldier (“people-in-arms”) at the service of the nation-state. I have added a commentary on Los conquistadores de la Antártida (1945), which consistently continues and expands the ideological standing of the author’s previous work.