Many consider Natalia Zaracho as one of the most unique figures in recent Argentine politics. The life story of the Patria Grande legislator was brought to the international editorial level with the publication of “From cartonera to deputy”a book that reconstructs his journey from social exclusion to his arrival at the National Congress and which will have its presentation on June 14 at the Madrid Book Fair.
The work was published by the Spanish publishing house La Independiente within the collection “Voices of Latin America”a series dedicated to making visible political and social trajectories of the continent with strong anchoring in stories of personal transformation. The book has prologues by the deputy Juan Grabois and the leader Ofelia Fernandez that provide political and symbolic legitimacy to the story, prepared by references linked to human rights, social thought and territorial militancy, which contextualize Zaracho’s experience as part of a phenomenon of the emergence of popular sectors in historically forbidden institutional spaces.
The authors were Cecilia Flachsland, Violeta Rosemberg and Nahuel Marchesin, who from the field of narrative journalism and cultural editing build a profile that combines research, testimony and biographical reconstruction. Flachsland is recognized for her work in the publishing field and for her participation in projects linked to Latin American literature; Rosemberg works as a journalist focusing on social and gender issues; and Marchesin has developed a career as a chronicler, with special interest in stories crossed by inequality and processes of social mobility.
The presentation in Madrid is part of an international circuit that seeks to project the figure of Zaracho beyond Argentina, highlighting her origin as a cardboard worker and her subsequent construction as a social leader within organizations of the popular economy, until she became a national representative. The event, scheduled in one of the central spaces of the fair, brings together both leaders from the editorial field and political and social actors interested in debating the place of the popular classes in contemporary democratic representation. A view that the Iberian country deepened and that the social democratic administration has been supporting as a counterweight to the libertarian ideals of VOX, influenced by the image of Javier Milei.
In this framework, one of the episodes that the book goes through, which contributed to installing Zaracho on the public agenda a few years ago, was his controversial statement about the reading requirements in Congress, a phrase that generated debate and was used both to question it and to defend it. “They send us laws of 300, 400 pages and you don’t have the time to read everything”he expressed at the time, in reference to the legislative dynamics. He also acknowledged that his access to the Peronist bloc bank was his first formal job in his life.
The quote, reproduced in the work, functions as a turning point that illustrates not only the material difficulties of parliamentary work, but also the tension between formal knowledge and the life experiences that his figure embodies. The publication of “From cartonera to deputy” and its presentation in Madrid thus consolidate the international projection of a leader whose career questions representation, social inequality and access to power.
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