Wish I had some money to burn

Hello everyone, welcome back to the blog. The read for this week is Money to Burn by Roberto Piglia. I didn’t know much about this book going in (only that it was about a bank robbery of some sort) and was quite shocked by what I ended up reading. My shock greatened when I learned afterwards that the story was based on real events. The frequent mention of police and eye-witness accounts should have been a giveaway, but I thought that this was just a narrative technique to enhance the sense of realism. The book centres around a group of young argentinian individuals who commit an incredibly intricately planned out robbery of a truck carrying a large sum of money. Key to the plan’s success is the paying out of numerous government officials and policemen, but when the money is taken and they are not payed, the authorities turn against the young men. Eventually everything comes to head at an apartment in Uruguay, where a lengthy shootout takes place involving over 300 police officers.

Two central characters to the Novel are Dorda Gaucho and Kid Brignone. They are introduced as twins but they are not related, and their relationship definitely has some sort of element of romance, which is shown when the author states that The Kid was “the only man that ever loved him (Dorda)” and that “Kid Brignone had treated him like a woman” (pg. 189). In the book Dorda Gaucho is focused on much more than the Kid, and he is a particularly interesting character. He is a quiet, cold blooded killer, who seemingly has complete disregard for everyone except The Kid. Dorda has a particular disdain for cops, who he sees as the enemy, seemingly both for ideological reasons, and because they oppose his occupation as a criminal. Despite his mostly psychopathic behaviour in the book, I actually began to feel for Dorda the end. Everyone in his life basically gave up on him from a young age, including his own mother, and he was subject to all kinds of abuse in his youth. Compared to the Kid, who left behind a large inheritance and caring family, Dorda’s path to crime is certainly more understandable.

The title of the book comes from a moment during the shootout where the criminals begin burning their stolen money. Surprisingly this act generates more outrage than the mass bloodshed that led up to it. In the eyes of the public, any motive is favourable to no motive. It is certainly an interesting reflection on Uruguayan society at this time that they seemingly place more value on money than human life, but I also don’t know if the reaction would be all that different if these events happened today.

Discussion Question: How did you feel about their act of burning money? How did it affect your perception of their crimes?