María wrote a diary when she was young and living on an island. In it, she recounted her days so far from her homeland and the rest of the world.
Perhaps she wrote it to help her better understand the madness that was life with Luis. The twists and turns of history meant that those damp-stained papers ended up in the historical archives of an equally young nation.
Many, many years later, Marcelo, a relative of María’s, arrived and read them with a perspective no one had ever seen before. He returned to those words and began to unravel them, searching for keys, clues, and signs that allowed him to see those islands as a sounding board for what was happening beyond the endless horizon of the sea. Thus began to be woven a plot that connected the political fabric of Buenos Aires with ships of various flags, Rossini operas, food, dances, and
invented languages.
As Carlo Ginzburg says, the Greeks tell us that Ariadne gave Theseus a thread so he wouldn’t get lost in the labyrinth. He complies by killing the Minotaur, but we know nothing of the footprints he left as he made his way through the labyrinth.
This journey is the one Marcellus wrote, taking the ends of the threads with which Maria wove her diary. And together, from the islands, they tell us the history of the world.
In another leap in time and space, I remember Marcellus staying in my house for days and nights, showing me that diary, which by then was already enormous. As he did, he would alternately transform into a French captain, a mulatto, or an English lady who designed dresses with Maria, and they would laugh
at how their creations would look outside the islands.
His passion for those islands was the fruit of his love for those people, whom he seemed to know intimately, people who, literally against all odds, built a place. There are those who build, there are those who invade or plunder, and Maria was on the side of those who build. And he tells us about it from Malvinas, his home.

Rafael Landea