Abstract Luisa Valenzuela’s second collection of stories, Aquí pasan cosas raras, is set in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and was published in 1975. Three stories–”Los mejor calzados,” “Los zombis,” and “Los Mascapios”—name in their titles groups of people whose grotesque characteristics make them metaphorical monsters; the title characters suffer both poverty and repression/domination in this “strange” moment of Argentine history and culture. These three tales in particular represent societal demonization of the poor and the desperate as monsters, when they were merely hungry, despairing citizens of the city. I analyze the black humor and metaphors of these stories in order to recover the underlying tales of terror. In all three the police are mentioned as those who enforce, force, or control, but the police are not the focus of the stories. Mendicants, the starving, and the underprivileged are primary; first represented as monsters, they are progressively transformed into characters readable as victims, for whom being monstrous and horrible is a label imposed from the outside and not an essential identity. In these stories, the narrators are the vulnerable poor and the narratees are the intelligentsia and the middle class who can discern realism and truths from the jokes and grotesqueries.

中文翻译：

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同情怪物：路易莎·瓦伦苏埃拉的“奇怪的事情”

摘要 Luisa Valenzuela 的第二部故事集 Aquí pasan cosas raras 以阿根廷布宜诺斯艾利斯为背景，并于 1975 年出版。三篇故事——“Los mejor calzados”、“Los zombis”和“Los Mascapios”——以他们的名字命名。以怪诞的特征使他们比喻成怪物的一群人；在阿根廷历史和文化的这个“奇怪”时刻，标题人物既遭受贫困又遭受压迫/统治。这三个故事特别代表了社会将穷人和绝望的人妖魔化为怪物，而他们只是饥饿而绝望的城市公民。我分析了这些故事的黑色幽默和隐喻，以恢复潜在的恐怖故事。在所有三个中，警察都被称为执行、强制或控制的人，但警察不是故事的焦点。乞丐、饥饿者和弱势群体是主要的；最初表现为怪物，它们逐渐转变为可读的受害者角色，对他们来说，怪物和可怕是从外部强加的标签，而不是基本身份。在这些故事中，叙述者是脆弱的穷人，叙述者是知识分子和中产阶级，他们能够从笑话和怪诞中辨别出真实性和真相。