Un hombre muerto a puntapiés by Pablo Palacio

The Policeman invited the assaulted to come with him to the Police Station with the object of him to declare what happened so they could solve the case, to which Ramirez denied rotundly. The ill-fated was bleeding abundantly by the nose, and questioned by the Policeman said he was the victim of an aggression by some people he didn’t know, just because he asked them for a cigarette. “Last night, approximately at twelve and a half, the Policeman number 451, that was on service in that zone, found between Escobedo and García streets, an individual named Ramirez almost in complete state of weakness.

To find out the truth is a moralizing action. How to throw to the basket the beating events of the streets? You can find the complete story in Spanish, in this webpage: Now, English is my second language, so if anybody finds a huge and unforgivable spelling or grammar mistake, please tell me, so I can change it.

So, I’ve decided to do it, and post the story in parts in this blog. After some time I decided that if I ever wanted her to read something about the Ecuadorian writer, I would have to translate it myself. Ultimately, my reading of Palacio's texts in light of visual technology leads to a reflection on what literature can gain from visual narrative recourses.I was looking, not long ago, for the story “Un hombre muerto a puntapiés” by Pablo Palacios in English for a friend of mine and I couldn’t find it on the web. Both texts are thus invested in exploring the complementarity of visual technology and literature as two narrative modes that fragment the fleeting experience of modernity.

In 'Un hombre muerto a puntapiés' (1927), photography, the 'crónica,' and ethical acts of reading, interpreting, and narrating become instruments for the narrator to solve the murder of Ramírez whose death is presumed to be caused by being kicked to death due to his homosexuality. In his novella 'Débora' (1927), Palacio employs the language of cinema (e.g., the cinematograph, the cinema, references to film studios, and film plots) to present a story which details the protagonist's fascination with films and foregrounds the narrator's self-reflexivity about the craft of storytelling. This current study explores the relationship between visual technology (cinema and photography) and a metanarrative preoccupation with the craft of literary narration in two texts by Pablo Palacio (Ecuador, 1906-47).

Un hombre muerto a puntapiés by Pablo Palacio