Un comentario sobre El crimen del siglo, de Miguel Torres

This critical commentary on Miguel Torres’s El crimen del siglo is framed within a research-creation strategy that articulates two narrative voices: one analytical and the other fictional. Through this duality, the author examines the figure of Juan Roa Sierra, the alleged assassin of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, from an intrahistorical perspective that subverts the official narrative. The analysis highlights how the novel employs an omniscient heterodiegetic narrator who, by fictionalizing the figure of the historian, questions the objectivity of historical discourse. Simultaneously, a homodiegetic voice emerges as an emotional and reflective counterpoint, embodying the subjectivity of the researcher projected onto the character. This narrative polyphony enables a critical reconstruction of El Bogotazo, focused on marginalization, mental illness, and the despair of Juan Roa Sierra. Torres’s novel, along with the accompanying commentary, does not aim to solve the crime but rather to open new questions about truth, justice, and collective memory. Thus, literature becomes a means to interrogate the silences of history and give voice to those who have been excluded