On Writers' Day, Leopoldo Lugones' great-granddaughter recalls a family history of power, abuse, and suicide.

The story of the Lugones family is a chronicle of power, abuse, and suicide that spans three generations. From the celebrated writer Leopoldo Lugones , born on June 13, 1874—151 years ago—to his great-granddaughter Tabita , the family name has been marked by the weight of political decisions, family betrayals, and a tragic destiny. As Cristina Mucci analyzes in her book Lugones: Los Intellectuales y el Poder en la Argentina (Sudamericana, 2024), the life of the writer and his descendants reflects the complex relationship between literature, politics, and power in Argentine history.

Leopoldo Lugones, the father of modernism in Latin America , not only left an indelible mark on Argentine literature, but also starred in a scandal that rocked his personal life. In 1926, he began a clandestine affair with María Emilia Cadelago, a young student . His son, Leopoldo "Polo" Lugones, head of the Federal Police, discovered the relationship and threatened to have him committed to a psychiatric hospital if he didn't end the affair. The pressure was unbearable. In 1938, the writer took his own life at a retreat in the Tigre Delta , ingesting a mixture of cyanide and whiskey.

Leopoldo "Polo" Lugones inherited the surname, but not the literary legacy. His name became associated with the invention of the electric cattle prod , a method of torture he used during the de facto government of José Félix Uriburu. The cattle prod became a symbol of horror during clandestine interrogations. However, Polo's fate was also tragic: in 1971, tormented by his own history, he decided to commit suicide.

Polo's daughter, Susana "Pirí" Lugones, took a path opposite to her father's. A writer and activist , she joined the Montoneros and was considered a "subversive" by the military dictatorship. In 1977, she was kidnapped by a task force and taken to a clandestine detention center. There, according to testimony, she was tortured using the same methods her father had used. In February 1978, she was murdered, becoming one of the many victims of state terrorism.

Pirí had three children: Alejandro, Tabita, and Carel. Alejandro, marked by addiction and depression, also ended up committing suicide in 1971, the same year as his grandfather, Polo. Tabita, on the other hand, had already decided to break with the past . At 20, in 1970, she had emigrated to Europe with the man who would eventually become her lifelong partner, Oscar Caballero, and renounced the Lugones surname, seeking to escape from the shadow of her family.

"The Lugones family's story is over. Not even anyone is called that anymore," Tabita Peralta said in an exclusive interview with Clarín from Barcelona. As for her brother, Carel, who had lived in Madrid for many years, according to Tabita, "he was very sick and quite alone. In 2023, he requested euthanasia (or assisted suicide), which was granted , but which never happened because he died a couple of days before."

For nearly forty years, Tabita remained both geographically and psychologically distant from the weight of her family history, until, in 2009, she published Family Portraits with the Emecé label. Then came Ravens of Memory: The Lugones, Light and Darkness (Ediciones de la Flor, 2014), and, in 2015, she starred in Juntapapeles , a documentary that explores the complex history of her family and its impact on Argentine politics and society, produced by El Hilo and broadcast on Canal Encuentro.

Her personal life also took a different direction from that of her ancestors. She married Oscar Caballero and formed a close-knit family. She had five children and five grandchildren, who grew up far from the shadow that haunted the Lugones family for three generations.

–How did you decide, after so much time, to write about your family history?

–After Family Portraits , several books had come out in Argentina about the history of the Lugones family, which always included a few mistakes. It took a long time, a lot of reading, recovering the papers I had saved from my grandmother, my father, my mother, and my brother's diary, etc. I consulted many sources and left Paris to settle near Barcelona, ​​facing the sea, and write. It was a long but continuous task. When I finished, the director of Emecé was no longer there. I proposed the manuscript to my friends at Ediciones de la Flor, and they said yes. Thus, Cuervos de la memoria was born. The gift that life gave me was Juntapapeles, the documentary about the book, made by Federico Randazzo and his team in 2015.

–Did you feel relieved after publishing it?

–When copies of the book ( Ravens of Memory ) arrived in Spain, I thought I had in my hands the end of a story I'd kept inside me for so many years. The surprise that June 2014—the month my granddaughter Inès was born and a niece, who I've long since lost in Buenos Aires, came on a trip—the surprise, I mean, was seeing her and my son Mateo reading it on the beach while they were making a family tree. “You've never told us so much,” my two daughters said. I loved seeing it published; I dedicated it to Oscar Caballero, with whom I left Buenos Aires in 1970 and we're still together.

–What was that kind of self-imposed exile like? How does one process the pain and overcome certain family stigmas to move forward?

–I was never an exile. If anything, a traveler. I traveled to Europe because I wanted to, without labels. But I certainly left all that family craziness behind without giving it much thought. It's true that, generally, I do things first and then justify or think about them. I'm impulsive. And life grew far from Buenos Aires, and I stayed for good. Because life was made up of children, jobs, friends, rented apartments; work took you from one city to another and back again. Schools, the kids' friends... At some point, we thought about going back, but something always happened that made us stay longer...

–You assimilated into European life…

–I've been fighting a long battle with immigration laws. I'm still Argentine, and I feel Argentine in Europe. Neither the Catalans nor the French officially consider me one of them. I've spent hours and days in police stations. I left Buenos Aires when I was 20, and I've been away for 55 years, with brief stays in my city. And I have friends in all three cities, people I love and who love me. I got involved in whatever my status as a foreigner allowed, like voting in parent-teacher elections in France. My children studied fantastically well, and time melted in my hands. Today I'm still here… a foreigner and happy to see the waves of the ocean a few meters from my house.