Isaura and the faces of violence in Nós matamos o Cão Tinhoso, by Luís Bernardo Honwana

Abstract

Nós matamos o Cão Tinhoso is a shortstory by Luís Bernardo Honwana, a Mozambican author, published in 1964. In this story, Honwana builds a narrative permeated with innocence, internal and collective conflicts, violence and childhood. The narrative takes place in a village in a rural area of Mozambique and everything that happens there culminates in a negative symbolic element: a grumpy, sick, and very smelly dog (Cão Tinhoso) that can’t do anything but cause nausea and disgust in those who see it. The narrative gains strength when Cão Tinhoso is sentenced to death, although the character Isaura, a girl who suffers from various forms of exclusion and prejudice, is the greatest victim of the violence that arises. The objective of this work is to analyze the trajectory of the character Isaura and the types of violence suffered by her, among which the institutional and gender violence stand out. This character personifies the colonized subjugated people and, as a woman, her situation is exacerbated. For this work, the reflections of Connel in his “Masculinity policies” (1995) and Infantes and Delgado in “The Meaning of Masculinity for Social Analysis” (2011) were used, that contribute to the perception of the naturalization of violence against the girl who, in fact, is the only one who acts with compassion and mercy towards the dying animal that gives its name to the story.
Keywords: gender violence; african literature; colonialism; social analysis.