El agua mala

When the water swallowed a town, memory endured. A chronicle of loss and of a country that forgot an entire community.  

When journalist Josefina Licitra first arrived at the ruins of Epecuén, she found what seemed like an abandoned, post-apocalyptic landscape. Beneath its haunting silence lay the forgotten story of a town swallowed by floodwaters in 1985, after a dam collapsed and forced its eight hundred residents to abandon their homes forever. Through deeply moving testimonies, Licitra reconstructs not only the disaster but also the enduring memory of a community that continues to mourn a place now lost beneath the water. Epecuén is a powerful work of literary reportage about loss, memory, resilience, and the fragile ties between people and place. From the author of 38 Stars (translated into Greek and Portuguese) and Fracture.