ABSTRACT
Like testimonial accounts, liberationist novels typically concentrate on describing the events that led to the military coup and the ulterior social struggle inside the country; life in exile is still not a central motif. The initial response to the tragic outcome of the military takeover was characterized by a denunciatory mood and expressed in testimonial accounts such as Tejas Verdes, Diario de un campo de concentracion en Chile by Hernan Valdes. Both the liberationist novel and liberation theology consider the poor and oppressed to be the foundational center of their discourses. The first formulations of liberation theology, however, proposed a concept of oppression that was too limited to the idea of class struggle, leaving behind determining factors that would later be added. Testimonial accounts denounce the official terrorism that was imposed with the excuse of reestablishing the lost order. Exiled in England and Spain, Valdes is “the only writer of a testimonial who had earlier made literary production his vocation”.
