Borges, Davi Arrigucci Jr. and Me: “A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-1874)”

Abstract

In dialogue with a 1985 article by Davi Arrigucci Jr., this piece constitutes a rereading of Borges’s “A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-1874),” from the perspective of the question of identity. Starting with the observation that Tadeo Isidoro is a case of internal colonialism, as per the definition of Pablo González Casanova, the conclusion drawn from the situation of Isidoro is that it amounts to an attempt to escape such a condition. As in other short stories by Borges’s, this attempt fails. Behind the figure of Tadeo Isidoro, it becomes apparent that there is a melancholic but skeptical narrator one who is neither the colonizer nor the colonized but rather “colonial”, much like Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, whom Borges greatly admired.