La autopista del Sur / The Southern Highway
Short stories and novellas , 1964
Nórdica
Pages: 72
In this story, written in 1964, Julio Cortázar narrates a fantastic traffic jam on the highway between Fontainebleau and Paris on a Sunday afternoon. In reality, it serves as a metaphor for our own lives: we are trapped in a routine. Each person in their car, identified by its make or model, aims to reach Paris to accomplish a specific task. An accident causes them to share the same time and place, the highway, for several days. Though they form groups to survive, each protagonist experiences their own solitude. As Ariel Dorfman points out, The Southern Highway served as a warning about the precipice we were approaching, and this critique of technology is even more valid and necessary today, as globalization has become the unquestionable dogma of our era. Jean-Luc Godard was inspired by this fantastic tale to make his film Weekend (1967).