Notes to The Aleph
The Dead Man
* Rio Grande doSuclass="underline" The southernmost state of Brazil, bordering both Argentina and Uruguay on the north. Later in this story, a certain wildness is attributed to this region; JLB often employed the implicit contrast between the more "civilized" city and province of Buenos Aires (and all of Argentina) and the less "developed" city of Montevideo and nation of Uruguay and its "wilderness of horse country," the "plains," "the interior," here represented by Rio Grande do Sul.
* Paso del Molino:"A lower-to-middle-class district outside Montevideo" (Fishburn and Hughes).
Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden
* The Auracan or Pampas tongue: The Pampas Indians were a nomadic people who inhabited the plains of the Southern Cone at the time of the Conquest; they were overrun by the Araucans, and the languages and cultures merged; today the two names are essentially synonymous (Fishburn and Hughes). English seems not to have taken the name Pampas for anything but the plains of Argentina.
* Pulpería: A country store or general store, though not the same sort of corner grocery-store-and-bar, the esquina or almacén, that Borges uses as a setting in the stories that take place in the city. The pulpería would have been precisely the sort of frontier general store that one sees in American westerns.
A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-1874)
* Montoneros: Montoneros were the men of guerrilla militias (generally gauchos) that fought in the civil wars following the wars of independence. They tended to rally under the banner of a leader rather than specifically under the banner of a cause; Fishburn and Hughes put it in the following way: "[T]heir allegiance to their leader was personal and direct, and they were largely indifferent to his political leanings."
* Lavalle: Juan GaloLavalle (1797-1841) was an Argentine hero who fought on the side of the Unitarians, the centralizing Buenos Aires forces, against the Federalist montoneros of the outlying provinces and territories, whose most famous leader was Juan Manuel de Rosas, the fierce dictator who appears in several of JLB's stories. The mention here of Lavalle and López would indeed locate this story in 1829, a few months before Lavalle was defeated by the combined Rosas and López forces (Fishburn and Hughes). One would assume, then, that the man who fathered Tadeo Isidoro Cruz was fighting with Rosas' forces themselves.
* Suárez' cavalry: Probably Manuel Isidoro Suárez (1759-1843), JLB's mother's maternal grandfather, who fought on the side of the Unitarians in the period leading up to 1829 (Fishburn and Hughes). Borges may have picked up the protagonist's name, as well, in part from his forebear.
* Thirty Christian men... Sgt. Ma}. Eusebia Laprida... two hundred Indians: Eusebio Laprida (1829-1898) led eighty, not thirty, men against a regular army unit of two hundred soldiers, not Indians, in a combat at the Cardoso Marshes on January 25, not 23,1856 (data, Fishburn and Hughes). The defeat of the Indians took place during a raid in 1879. JLB here may be conflating the famous Thirty-three led by Lavalleja against Montevideo (see note to"Avelino Arredondo"in The Book of Sand), Laprida's equally heroic exploit against a larger "official" army unit, and Laprida's exploit against the Indians two decades later.
* Manuel Mesa executed in the Plazade la Victoria: Manuel Mesa (1788-1829) fought on the side of Rosas and the Federalists. In 1829 he organized a force of montoneros and friendly Indians and battled Lavalle, losing that engagement. In his retreat, he was met by Manuel Isidoro Suárez and captured. Suárez sent him to Buenos Aires, where he was executed in the Plaza Victoria.
* The deserter Martín Fierro: As JLB tells the reader in the Afterword to this volume, this story has been a retelling, from the "unexpected" point of view of a secondary character, of the famous gaucho epic poem Martín Fierro, by José Hernández. Since this work is a classic (or the classic) of nineteenth-century Argentine literature, every reader in the Southern Cone would recognize "what was coming": Martin Fierro, the put-upon gaucho hero, stands his ground against the authorities, and his friend abandons his uniform to stand and fight with him. This changing sides is a recurrent motif in Borges; see "Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden" in this volume, for instance. It seems to have been more interesting to JLB that one might change sides than that one would exhibit the usual traits of heroism. Borges is also fond of rewriting classics: See "The House of Asterion," also in this volume, and note that the narrator in "The Zahir" retells to himself, more or less as the outline of a story he is writing, the story of the gold of the Nibelungen. One could expand the list to great length.
Emma Zunz
* Bagé: A city in southern Rio Grande do Sul province, in Brazil.
* Gualeguay: "A rural town and department in the province of Entre Ríos"(Fishburn and Hughes).
* Lanús:"A town and middle-class district in Greater Buenos Aires, south-west of the city" (Fishburn and Hughes).
* Almagro: A lower-middle-class neighborhood near the center of Buenos Aires.
* Calle Liniers: As the story says, a street in the Almagro neighborhood.
* Paseo de Julio: Now the Avenida Alem. This street runs parallel with the waterfront; at the time of this story it was lined with tenement houses and houses of ill repute.
* A westbound Lacroze: The Lacroze Tramway Line served the northwestern area of Buenos Aires at the time; today the city has an extensive subway system.
* Warnes: A street in central Buenos Aires near the commercial district of Villa Crespo, where the mill is apparently located.
The Other Death
* Gualeguay chú:"A town on the river of the same name in the province of Entre Ríos, opposite the town of Fray Bentos, with which there is considerable interchange" (Fishburn and Hughes).
* Masoller: Masoller, in northern Uruguay, was the site of a decisive battle on September 1, 1904, between the rebel forces of Aparicio Saravia (see below) and the National Army; Saravia was defeated and mortally wounded (Fishburn and Hughes).
* The banners of Aparicio Saravia: Aparicio Saravia (1856-1904) was a Uruguayan landowner and caudillo who led the successful Blanco (White party) revolt against the dictatorship of Idiarte Borda (the Colorados, or Red party). Even in victory, however, Saravia had to continue to fight against the central government, since Borda's successor, Batlle, refused to allow Saravia's party to form part of the new government. It is the years of this latter revolt that are the time of "The Other Death." See also, for a longer explanation of the political situation of the time, the story"Avelino Arredondo"in The Book of Sand.
* Rio Negro or Paysandú: RíoNegro is the name of a department in western Uruguay on the river of the same name, just opposite the Argentine province of Entre Ríos. Paysandú is a department in Uruguay bordering Rio Negro. Once again JLB is signaling the relative "wildness" of Uruguay is comparison with Argentina, which was not touched by these civil wars at the time.